The voice under all silences
by pekeleke
Summary: Four years after the final battle Severus Snape wakes up. He believes this must be Hell, but... what if it isn't?
1. Chapter 1

**Author:** pekeleke  
**Pairing:** Severus Snape/Harry Potter  
**Word** **Count:** 235K+  
**Rating:** N-17  
**Summary:** Four years after the final battle Severus Snape wakes up. He believes this must be Hell, but... what if it isn't?.  
**Warning(s):** Strong language.  
**A/N:** English is not my mother tongue so mistakes are to be expected.  
**Beta:** None  
**Disclaimer:** The characters used in this fiction are not mine. No money is being made from it.

**BEWARE: THIS STORY WILL FEATURE A M/M HOMOSEXUAL RELATIONSHIP. If you do not wish to read about such things do NOT proceed.**

_**The voice under all silences. Chapter 1.**_

Eyes coloured with the same unutterable darkness of a starless midnight focused with ruthless determination on the harmless, orange-tinged cheerfulness of the fire.  
The room was warm, unusually so, and the heat that was unstoppably conquering the room felt unfriendly, cloying. It threatened his frayed senses with the instinctive perception of unseen and imminent danger.

His lids closed, shutting off the flickering flames. But the unnervingly loud popping of the burning wood couldn't be so easily vanished from his consciousness, as it exploded at random intervals into the heavy silence. His throat throbbed with the never-ending agony spreading from the seeping wound that covered what, once, had been the right side of his neck. There was a bandage, frayed grey and much too tight, protecting the area. Hiding the suppurating, green-tinged craters left behind by the snake-bite that should have killed him and yet, to his dismayed disappointment, had failed to do so.

His muscles clamped painfully as he attempted to swallow yet again. He was trying hard to ignore the increasingly angry sense of desperation that was threatening to overwhelm his already exhausted mind with every passing second. His nerves were shot to Hell. He felt drained by the unrelenting strength of the venom that still coursed through his veins, keeping him ill and vulnerable. Making his every word a triumph of both: bull-headed doggedness and sheer, unbending pride.

He might wish with every fibre of his now weakened being to have died, once and for all, on that Merlin-forsaken shack, but... he'd be dammed before he allowed any one of them, bastards, to know exactly how... shattered... he'd become.  
His head throbbed with tension and he felt nauseous. His heartbeat pounded unpleasantly through his every vein with so much force that he could feel it hammering him from the inside out. It pulsed maddeningly at the side of his jaw. Against his too-thin wrists. On the mangled skin left on his throat...

The heat made him feel drowsy and claustrophobic. It irritated his dark eyes, drying them to the point of pain. It made him long for a tall glass of cooling water, but he refused to shift from his position. Rejected the very idea of allowing them, whomever they might be, to see him reach for the temptingly close jug, filled to the brim with tinkling ice, and only Circe knew what else, mixed in with the crystalline beauty of the water that they had provided.

He had been removed from the hospital bed he'd been inhabiting in Azkaban prison and brought here: to this mocking, overly-warm replica of his own destroyed chambers at Hogwarts for some obscure purpose that he had no desire to discover.

They had dragged him in, set the fireplace ablaze and very deferentially advised him to "make yourself at home, Sir", as if he could!. As if he were some long awaited and reverently admired member of their long lost family...

There were papers on the side table. Quite artfully folded in order to show their incredibly ridiculous headlines to best advantage:

"The Greatest Hero of the Wizarding World to be finally released!"

"Loyal Dumbledore's spy to receive the Order of Merlin, First Class, in exclusive ceremony this coming Friday!"

"Rodolphus Curlieu, Minister of Magic, to offer public apology to The Greatest Hero on behalf of the magical community! "

His choleric black gaze shot derisive daggers at the nastily deceitful print before flickering, once more, towards the water and his thin lips tightened with hatred.

How dare they mock him so?. How dare they play their cruel games on him once more?. How dare they rub the face of the nasty, murdering scum-bag universally known as the Potion Master of Hogwarts, with the soul-destroying vision of all he'd, so misguidedly, searched for in his wretched life but had never, ever, found: Recognition. Appreciation. Respect...  
His breathing evened and he forced his long fingers into fists. Curling them protectively into the pristine edges of the familiar teaching robes that he'd always favoured. The weight of the now utterly unfamiliar cloth felt like the embrace of a long-lost friend, a caress of comfort. A whisper of forgiveness.

They had forced him out of his embarrassingly inappropriate mid-tight, Azkaban-issued hospital gown and into these clothes with one single, apparently deferential, wave of some unknown auror's wand and he resented them the kindness. He suspected their motives at the apparently missed opportunity to humiliate him even further by forcing him to disrobe before their eyes, while they all cackled at his inadequacies and called him names, as the aurors used to do... so long ago.

The fake deference had gotten under his skin with more devastating impact than the outright cruelty had done. He'd become immune to many things over the years, after all. Things that he had to endure with gritted teeth in order to survive. Things that he'd believed had made him virtually impervious to torture of any kind.  
-Well... Now I know better.- He thought to himself savagely. Furiously aware of the fact that the unexpected twist they had included in their eagerness to make him suffer had, to his horrified shock, worked like magic. He'd been hurt indeed. He'd felt wretched, harmed to the very depths of what was left of his soul. He'd been lethally wounded.  
The sudden thundering of unequivocally rushing feet had him tensing in the perfectly replicated version of his own favourite armchair and he squared his shoulders. Determinedly ignoring the agony that the action sparked from his damaged neck.  
The door behind him opened with a bang.  
A brusque, anxiously distressed wave of magic washed over him as the heavy wood was pried off it's locked position. He refused to turn around, refused to acknowledge the presence of whomever they'd seen fit to send in to torture him further. Rejected the very idea of allowing his unwelcome tormentor to establish superiority in this mockingly hurtful replica of his former safe haven. They had intended to intimidate him by mimicking his own chambers at Hogwarts in shatteringly painful detail.  
-Well... I shall play them at their game and behave as if I am, indeed, at home. As if I am the master of all that I see. As if I have not waited, like the tired puppet that I've become, for the bastards to yank on my strings once more...-  
The door banged twice, against the incredibly realistic centuries-old granite, before closing and the incipient headache that had been threatening the periphery of his consciousnesses finally exploded into glorious, inauspicious life.

His lips compressed further and his eyes narrowed to slits, so dramatically reducing the already meagre amount of colour left in his pale visage, that he'd fancied himself turned into one of those odd figures carved in wax that he'd seen in the strange muggle museum he'd once visited. He shivered with the unwelcome recollection of their awful, inanimate faces. They had all looked so lifeless and unreal, so fake. They looked dead. Unreachable. Untouchable...  
"Oh, thank Godric you are here, Sir!. Snape. Err... Professor Snape. Gosh!, I can't believe how badly Myers messed this up!. He wasn't supposed to bring you here..."  
Severus' incredulity held him utterly still. He couldn't have moved to save his miserable life, had he truly wanted to do so. Not for all the magic of the founders!. Not under his own steam at least.  
He'd recognized the voice at once, of course, although not the slightly panicky tone making it brim with... worry?. His mind could not cope with the surreal quality of their move.

Such bizarre, unexpected weapon, this one. Such unpredictable tactic. Such... confusing, inexplicable deception and... for what? What could anyone possibly do to him that hadn't been done already sort of granting him THE KISS? What were they planning to do that could possibly rival the warm care he'd been receiving at the hands of Azkaban's resident healer?.  
Heavy boots thumped against the stone floor as his unlikely visitor approached, still babbling that increasingly disconcerting diatribe at top speed.  
"Why haven't you tried to hex me yet, at the very least ?. Where the Hell is your wand?. No. Don't tell me... That bloody incompetent forgot to give it to you, didn't he?. I swear I'm gonna skin Myers alive, Sir!"  
-Myers?. Who the Hell was Myers?-  
The steps came to an abrupt halt right behind his chair and a short but blissful second of blessed silence descended upon the room. The suffocating heat that was coming off the fire became the least thing on his mind as his thoughts whirled fast. Faster.  
A Dizzying array of possibilities, every one more unlikely than the last, were analyzed before being ruthlessly discarded during that silent reprieve. Then there was a rustle of cloth, a clearly perceived shift in the air around his chair and the shape of a man who should have looked familiar but, surprisingly, didn't materialized on his left.  
"It's roasting in here!. Are you sure you're all right, Sir?"A wide, lightly tanned hand rose towards him in a lurching, anxious motion and he startled enough to bark in defensive, blistering rage:  
"Do. Not. Dare!"  
The hand froze.

The moment became charged, with the kind of unwelcome tension that brought a renewed cramping to his rigid neck and shoulders. Unutterable pain shot all the way down his arm from his thrice-dammed wound and he curled his long fingers into a reflexive fist that his visitor noticed and interpreted incorrectly. As usual.  
"Calm down, for Goodness sake, Professor!. I only wanted to check you for fever..."

He could feel his old mask, that viciously sarcastic shell that had protected him for so many years, fall across his features like an old, battered helmet. One that might no longer fit him as tightly as it used to, but that could still be useful in the face of danger, nevertheless.

He forced himself to ignore the shaky weakness of his legs and rise, in order to stare down his nose at the spawn of his worst enemy. He couldn't believe that he was being forced to confront thus the beloved child of the only woman who had ever bothered to love him: -Oh, Lily!... -  
"I happen to be perfectly calm, Mr. Potter. Unlike you, I might add, if that infuriatingly anxious rambling that only you'd have the courage to inflict upon me is as reliable a hint towards the state of your emotions as your former temper tantrums used to be."  
Surprisingly the brat smiled.  
"Ah!. You are all right, then. I'm sorry if I scared you with the touchy-feely-thing, you know?. We were all so worried when you didn't turn up where you were expected to that I... well, I might have err..."

The words tapered off into some kind of horrifyingly bashful little silence and Severus frowned.  
His eyes narrowed suspiciously, trying to bore holes into the slightly lowered green ones that reminded him so much of Lily's that he couldn't bring himself to stare at them for long, lest his own guilty regret manage to finally crush him like the pathetic insect that he should had been all along. Lily, his precious Lily, would have been still alive if he'd turned out to be some sort of creepy-crawly instead of the man who had, ultimately, betrayed her. She would have lived to raise her boy if it hadn't been for his unforgivable treachery...

Lost as he was, in anguished contemplation of that truth, he missed a new instalment of incoherent babble that ended puzzlingly on:  
"... Then Hermione said that it could be true. That, in your state, it was possible that you might have felt faint from the portkey journey and I started to see it all over again: your body, so still, on the floor. Your head covered in blood. So much blood... and I didn't even bother to stay back and scream at Myers. I just... apparated straight to Hogsmeade and started running."  
His headache reached its peak at that very second as a wave of rage so powerful that he could barely control it rose across his chest, like the deathliest kind of tidal wave.  
"Are you so dim-witted, so obtuse, so carelessly confident in your appallingly pathetic attempt to harm me that you really believe it possible to convince me that I am at Hogwarts? How stupid do you think I am, Potter?"  
Startled green eyes focused on his own and an inexplicable edge of barely repressed violence punctuated the sharp-toned, two-word question that the boy managed to bark:  
"Harm you?"  
If the little bastard expected him to back off he could very well just fuck the Hell off!. Or send him right back to Azkaban, were he belonged. Painful mind games were not really his thing any longer. Never had been, to be perfectly honest. That had always been more Albus' style than his own. The thought ambushed him, spearing mercilessly through what meagre amount of heart he could still lay claim to before he could repress it.  
- Albus!... -

His eyes closed and he felt himself grow cold from head to toes. He was clammy with shock. He would not, could not, bring himself to deal with the consequences of the monstrous task he had performed in order to save a boy whom had been saved in the end by the very same thing that saved this one: the love of a mother Hell-bent on protecting her young...  
"Professor?"  
His legs folded under him so unexpectedly that he was denied the dignity of regaining his seat unaided and he crumbled like a statue made out of shifting sand when his long-unused muscles failed to support him.  
"Severus!..."

Panic. Not his own, but the boy's, forced his eyes open and he blinked through a haze of mortifying weakness right into the face of a strangely pale Potter. Then he realized that there were arms around him, keeping his useless body safely cocooned against the heaving chest of the green-eyed menace and he flailed with angry embarrassment.  
"Unhand me!" He hissed, recklessly ignoring the tearing pain that his own tone wrenched from his badly damaged throat.  
"I can't. You'll fall!"  
The surreal situation rose his hackles. He hated this... this... blasphemy of reality. This totally horrifying charade that the boy was playing. He felt savaged and on edge. Ready to attack whoever dared come close in order to protect what pitifully little was left of himself from further harm at the hands of those whom had only ever loathed him.  
"So? Since when have you cared if I broke, Potter?"

The arms supporting his weight turned rigid around him and that very young face, so familiar and yet so utterly alien to him now, froze with the kind of wretched pain that had to be false.  
"Since I grew up!" The brat growled, tightening his hold on him with an easy strength that frightened Severus into the realization that he was here, somewhere as of yet undetermined, wandless and apparently alone with a man who could overwhelm his pitiful defences in the blink of an eye...

His foot fought for purchase against the unyielding granite floor and he ignored the screaming pain that was shooting up and down his legs as he forced himself to straighten up within that confusingly protective hold.

"Unhand me!" He repeated once again. Pushing firmly against the heaving chest that was plastered almost completely against his own in a determined demand to be set free.

Potter looked at him through narrowed eyes. A vein throbbed in the corner of that fiercely clenched jaw and that face, so unfamiliarly matured by whatever harrowing trials the boy had endured lately, locked into an expression of doggedly determined mulishness.  
"If my touch offends you so, I'll gladly set you back on the chair, Professor. But I won't allow you to come to harm on my watch. Not again. Not even to soothe your injured pride!"  
The words sent him reeling with their ludicrous bizarreness and he all but jabbed his index finger into the chest of the Wizarding World's Heroic Boy Wonder.  
"Release me, Potter. At once!"

Surprisingly the boy's face became even more closed off. Emerald coloured determination flashed across the gaze trying to drill holes into his own so intently that he felt, for a crazily exhausted second, tempted to lower his eyes, like a chastised young child. Silence fell, spreading between them like a frigidly cold blanket seeking to freeze them in place. Turn them to stone. Hold them utterly captive...  
The moment stretched as they both stared into one another's eyes with equal amounts of obstinate tenaciousness to have their opposing wishes fulfilled. Severus' paper-thin eyelids fluttered minutely as he locked his jaw in order to suppress the pain-filled groan that formed in the back of his throbbing throat when a new and devastatingly strong cramp turned the useless muscles of his right leg to rock.

Although not a single sound escaped his tightly compressed lips the boy seemed able to read him like a book. Sudden awareness shot across those green eyes and a look of frustrated concern softened the young features.  
"Why must you make everything so difficult?" Potter growled that question from such close range that he felt every word ghost across his right cheek and sink beneath his skin. He didn't have enough time to respond before the situation entered the realms of the most appallingly realistic nightmare. So ridiculously fantastic in its development, so risible indeed -if one had within one's spirit the kind of strength left to admire the finest of all ironies- that he found himself contemplating for the very first time the relieving idea that he could, perhaps, be asleep. Trapped inside a dream of his own making. Dragged into this... this... aberration of the true reality by his own guilty conscience and some kind of twisted need for... atonement.  
His eyes bulged almost completely out of their sockets when the blasted figment of his imagination lurched slightly sideways in order to, horror of horrors!, lift him up into a pair of overly muscled arms that he was by now mostly certain he must have conjured out of some... depraved... recess of his mind. Surely, certainly, the real Potter wouldn't have turned into some kind of rugged Greek God since the last time he saw his skinny little hide... That idea alone reassured him so much, offered his exhausted psyche such relief, that he allowed himself to ignore for the moment the disturbing actions of the... the... being who was so insistently trying to manhandle him straight into total humiliation.  
"Gosh... You are so thin that you are practically weightless!" The figment... thing... Potter... growled disapprovingly against his ear while carefully hefting him off the ground. He was being held so protectively against that huge, too-warm chest that he felt threatened by the horrible surrealism of the whole God-awful mess...  
He wondered why, of all the possibilities available to his darkly twisted mind, he'd settled for this particularly cruel form of torture. One so reminiscent of the pain-filled pranks played on him during his early teens that he supposed there could be some sort of sick explanation as to what on Earth could Potter be doing in a dream of his. The boy had always been like an emoting replica of his happily defunct father, after all...  
"This is the worst nightmare I've ever had to endure..." He muttered absently to himself in startled self-awareness.  
The bulging arms tightened uncomfortably around him when his unwelcome carrier came to an abrupt halt not five paces into wherever it was that he intended to deliver him, and Severus' brow furrowed in baffled incomprehension. His dark eyes rose towards the face that was so inappropriately close to his own by now that he could actually feel the sharp edge of the... the... Potter's... unshaven bristles digging into the side of his temple.

His gaze collided with the kind of glare that no self-respecting Gryffindor should have been able to produce and he felt the vibration caused by the boy's cross bark run all the way along the left side of his body, which was being most rudely plastered against the muscled chest from Hell.  
"Gee!, Thanks a lot, professor. And to think that I almost broke my neck running down a million bloody stairs just to get to you!"  
Now this nightmare was turning seriously aggravating. He could not fathom why his unconscious need for self-flagellation had decided that he needed to endure the company of a sulking and sympathetic Potter.  
"I don't see what your problem is, you, annoying child!" He finally confronted the thing harshly, feeling more than uncomfortable with the extremely irregular situation, with the illogical nature of this delusion. He was more than ready to wake up in the freezing coldness of Azkaban's medical ward. He was even eager to discover what new misery Peterssen, the vicious healer that ruled the place with an unchallenged violent hand had decided to subject him to this morning.  
"Considering that I happen to know exactly what kind of nightmares you've had to endure, I imagine that it wouldn't take a genius to figure out what my problem is, Snape!" Green eyes that had darkened with enough bitterness to match the raw undertones of those sharply pronounced words bore into his own as the boy resumed walking.  
"You know... at the risk of sounding totally conceited I should tell you that most people would sell their souls for the chance of being exactly where you are, Professor. It just figures that you would be among the very few who consider the honor of being cradled in my arms to be nothing short of torture!"  
Severus didn't like the strange vibe that he was getting here. He despised the uncomfortable sense of wrongness that scraped along his nerve-endings like the touch of rough sanding paper and was suspicious of the inexplicable swirl of emotions that fleeted across the expressive face so close to his own. He liked even less the fact that he'd finally realized exactly where it was that Potter was heading.

His heart banged against his ribs as his mind struggled to force itself awake. His mouth tightened with raging distaste. With impotent self-scorn for having allowed this atrocity to progress this far and, in his instinctive need to lash out, he ended up responding as viciously as he knew how to the little jerk's astonishingly pretentious claim:  
"Then by all means, boy, Go!. Don't imagine even for a second that I'll languish in simpering reminiscence of this one hellish moment. I have neither the intention, nor the desire, of spending any more time than I have to trapped inside the abominable clutches of this disgusting nightmare, and I shall be eternally grateful if you could happen to just... conveniently vanish from it!. Preferably before you actually reach the bedroom door, if you please."  
The contrary little cretin halted once again and Severus could have cried in sheer relief as he realized that his wish had been almost completely granted, for once. Potter had actually halted...

He had not exactly vanished, no. That would have been so unexpectedly generous of the Founders that he might have died from the incredulity of imagining himself to have been heard by those almighty beings. But the boy had stopped in the middle of the narrow corridor and was completely ignoring the ominously close proximity of the bedroom door that Severus had no intention whatsoever of ever crossing in this particular manner. Least of all, in the company of a man whom he'd been delightedly tormenting for many years. A man who detested him in return with a passion only surpassed by a very understandable hatred towards the Dark Lord himself.  
The amber-tinged light coming off the sconces that hung along the passage was turning the brat's ghastly spectacles into reflective little pools of light that made it virtually impossible to read the eyes that must be showing... what exactly? Surprise to have been unmasked as a wisp of Severus' own fevered mind?. Remorse for having been caught taking part in this mockery of care in order to humiliate an already defeated enemy through derisive scorn? Shock that said enemy had not, as they all had probably expected, dissolved into a grateful puddle of abnegation at the very sight of the Saviour of the Wizarding World?  
His head throbbed with sheer tension as a second slowly stretched into another and the boy... the thing, Potter, simply stood there: crushing him tightly against his chest as if he were some kind of life-sized teddy bear while gazing down at him from behind the privacy of those reflective lenses without uttering a word. Not. One. Word...  
He'd just opened his mouth and was readying himself to demand being set down when the witless wonder returned abruptly to babbling life:  
"You... err... you are not exactly making sense, Snape. Sir. Err... professor. I don't think you are...mmm... "with it", so to speak. Are you sure you are not...huh, you know, sick?"  
-What the Hell..?- He blinked in confused reaction to that strange diatribe, attempting to figure out exactly what was it that the ridiculous moron thought he could be carrying "With him".  
"I am not sick. I am not stupid, either, and I won't play these ridiculous games with the likes of you. Now unhand me, at once, and return me to my flea-infested bed in Azkaban, if you don't mind. I am certain that the sooner I lay there in this dream the sooner I'll wake up!"  
There was that choked, extremely realistic, gasp of surprise again and the messy dark head shifted around enough for the lenses to unveil their secrets, as they were being no longer painted with the unfathomable reflections of the flames. Severus' hackles rose as he finally looked into those familiar eyes and discovered that they were shadowed with concern and open disbelief. With a frantic, helpless, worry.

"You think that you are dreaming?. That you are still in Azkaban?. That I...?. That we are playing a trick on you, like my father used to do? Like Sirius?..."  
With every word he spoke the boy's voice rose higher and higher, brutally exacerbating his throbbing headache without any consideration, the bastard!. Those overly-muscled arms crushed him as well, closing menacingly around him as if, now that he found himself discovered, the godforsaken whelp could think of nothing better to do than attempting to restrain him physically as opposed to continuing using his initial tactic of old-fashioned buttering up.

The scorching, minty-tinged puffs of air that kept thumping his shocked features after every single sharp-toned syllable was growled straight into his face caused him to frown thunderously. He was truly pissed off with all this nonsense!.  
"Potter, Shut the bloody Hell up already!" He screamed over the top of all the ire so unjustly being directed towards his puzzled self, and regretted the impulse when he felt the sharp tug of brutal agony that his action had to sparked. The blasted snake-bite began to thrum unpleasantly and he was forced to lower his unraveling voice in order to hide the increasing weakness of his strained vocal chords from the boy:  
"I don't really expect you to either care nor understand this but, for what it's worth, let me be frank: I am tired, Potter. Truly tired. I am sick and I am bewildered, and I do not want to deal with you!.  
I don't care if you are truly a nightmare, or a ghost, or some kind of avenging angel come to take me to task for my many transgressions. I am already paying for them all in full!. I've been doing so every single second that I've spent alive in Albus' absence. In Lily's. In the shadow of all the souls whose deaths I've caused...

Leave me alone, for goodness sake!. Leave me alone to suffer, and atone, and pay for it in blood. In tears. In whatever the Hell coin you think its appropriate. I'm certain that every Azkaban gaoler will be happy to accommodate the suggestions fallen from the lips of their great Saviour.

Now for Merlin's sake, PUT ME THE FUCK DOWN AND SEND ME BACK!" He roared at the top of his voice, heedless of the fierce throbbing that was spreading cursed fire down his neck and into his arm, like a river of molten lava intent on consuming him without mercy. He felt so... liberated... So at peace with all the world for that one brilliant tic on the clock of his life, that he could have very happily surrendered his last breath to the stunned face of his bitter enemy's child. Then his neck surrendered to the most savage kind of agony and he choked in the sudden silence.

His eyes widened with the shattering awareness that his windpipe was closing down in shocked response to the unbearable pain that he'd just caused himself. The boy's green gaze, which was still hovering just above his own, seemed to be alert and frenzied. Centered solely on him with a distressed sort of inexplicable fear.

He closed his own eyes determinedly, then. Not really willing to witness this once more. He didn't want to see that pale face while he died, again, in the blasted boy's arms...  
This was just... another sickeningly pathetic little chestnut of all encompassing bloody cosmic irony at his expense. Must he only, ever, die in the arms of a Potter?. Like father, like son. The bastards!.  
Couldn't the greedy, little jerks leave him alone to enjoy his imminent demise just this once?  
His throat convulsed uselessly and he attempted to breathe, he really did. But the effort was as useless as he'd suspected. He started to flay against the arms that still held him and his hacking, dry-sounding intakes echoed around the corridor like deathly curses...  
"Professor!... Professor... Severus!..." There was something puzzlingly frenetic in the urgent voice that called him, but he couldn't pay any attention to it at the moment. He was quite busy dying, thank you very much.  
For a second he thought that the sudden, dazzlingly white blast of almost furious magic that he'd experienced must have been the welcoming embrace of Lady Death. But then he sensed the almost unendurable constriction on one's body that's so characteristic of apparition and felt ridiculously cheated by having been proved right: he hadn't been at Hogwarts after all... It had all been a lie, a terrible trick played upon him by perverse little children. He would not die at home. He would die in...  
"Severus!..."  
His mind swam in and out of focus with the slowness of one already barely here, but he recognized that voice without any trouble. He could put a face to that familiar sound that had been his faithful companion during so many years of misery, during a million and one moments just like this one. So many close calls... So many...

Poppy... Poppy Pomfrey was here. Right here!. Struggling to keep his eyes open he followed the sound of her voice, surrendering himself to his own desperate need to to see her one last time. She looked old, frightened and terribly fragile... She was running at top speed towards him with a tearful, strained face and he wanted to smile at her, console her. With the last of his strength he fought the hold keeping him trapped and an arm that was strangely ghostlike, as it was covered in too big black clothing, rose shakily towards her.  
-Don't worry about me, Poppy, I'm finally going somewhere safe. I'm going home to Albus...  
I'm here, Potter is also here and the muggles say that third time's the charm and all that rot...-  
Although he couldn't have possibly said any of that out loud he must have been broadcasting his thoughts because the next thing he heard was the blasted brat's enraged roar:

"No... No!. You won't do this to me, you grumpy old bastard!. Poppy... Poppy, do something!. He is fading as we speak. He is... SEVERUS!..."  
He heard a scream. No. Several screams. And crying... Dear Merlin!... Someone, somewhere, was shedding a misty old tear in his behalf. How... curious...  
His lungs held no more air. His mind managed no further thought. His ears buzzed unpleasantly one last time before embracing the deafening silence of absolute nothingness and his eyes, his ebony-black eyes, froze into lifelessness while they were still stubbornly opened, directing a heartbreakingly accusing glare towards the world that he had not a single reason to regret leaving behind...

TBC...


	2. Chapter 2

_**THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 2 **_

As if through a thick fog he heard them come and go. People who were both: familiar and strange.

Some were old and watery voiced. Some were impersonal, professional, clinically cold and softly spoken. One sounded tentatively tender, contrite. Uneasy... but also brimming with such gentle care that her touch upon his brow felt like the caress of a long-stranded mother. It _soothed_ him straight into tranquility with the strength of her regret alone.

-Minnie... Don't cry, Minnie. You were _never_ meant to know...-

There was mostly silence, though. And utter peace. There was _nothing _here. Nothing at all, apart from a curious kind of calm that allowed him to simply _be_, as if he were floating in a never-ending flow of water, or flying among clouds.

He desired to think of nothing. To feel no emotions. To hold only this emptiness.

Eventually, though, he discovered that he couldn't actually _avoid_ thinking and then began to understand that this _thing..._ this hushed darkness filled with weepy noises and creepily consoling pats to the back of his hand could not possibly be that lauded-ad-nauseum _"Greatest_ _New_ _Adventure"_ of Albus'. _That_ unwelcome awareness brought home an even more distressing realization: the blasted muggles were wrong about that third-time lucky nonsense!. But then... of course they had to be wrong. The whole thing made no actual sense, did it? He wondered idly about the nature of the terrible demon that must have possessed him, in order to convince him to pay any sort of attention to the same species that had begot his miserable excuse for a father. Dear Merlin, he must have been _mad._ Or _dying._ Or _both..._ Again!.

He faded in and out of consciousness. In and out of pain. In and out of reality.

He saw people that should not be here in Azkaban. They were all gentle souls. Naive, beautiful people who couldn't possibly _belong_ between these murder-infested walls. This were people who surely deserved _better. People like_ Minnie and Poppy. Like Rubeus... They had all touched his hand. His cheek. One ear...

They patted the bed comfortingly and covered him up with blankets, offered him water and wept. Yes... they'd _WEPT!._ All over him. The heathens!.

He saw others as well. They came to disturb him in bizarre visions that defied all logic... more _figments_ of his imagination, then. Or plain old-fashioned nightmares, twisted wisps of unconscious regrets turned into form. Why else would he be seeing that particularly annoying band of cheerful red-haired people? _Weasleys!._.. He refused to have _Weasleys_ in his _"Adventure". _Or his delusion. Or whatever the Hell this was...

He remembered the Know-It-All trying to suffocate him into a new death, his _third,_ with that unmanageable _bush_ she called hair. She'd talked to him constantly. Disrupting his precious _floating_ with her shrill little voice as she lectured him, _HIM!, _and advised him to pull himself out of his hole and _face_ the music, posthaste. Of all the disrespectful...

Then there was Draco...

He remembered Draco with the vivid recall of the feverish. Or the wishful. With the shattering regret of a man who knew himself to have failed that boy utterly. His godchild... a soul more precious to him than unicorn-horn powder and he hadn't been able to protect him as he should have. Not from _everything._ Not _completely._ Almost not at all.

Draco came and went. Then, came again...

Those fine blond tresses shone like moonlight in the darkness and those long-fingered hands combed his own hair gently in a gesture that was familiar enough to bring tears to his eyes.

"Dra...co!..."

He remembered the shushing sounds that issued from his godson's trembling lips and the fervently voiced promise that told him:

"Everything is going to be alright, Godfather. You just have to shush and go back to sleep for a while longer. Regain your strength. Be patient..."

He cared not for the lies but treasured the image, nevertheless. Appreciated the hopeful smile that warmed the beautiful depths of those glittering gray eyes. Held on to the loving expression that was plastered over that beloved face with all of his strength. All this beautiful devotion was meant for him, after all. He knew that Draco loved him unconditionally, despite his many failings...

Sometimes there were also sounds. Familiar echoes of every day activities that lulled him into sleep were mixed in with other kind of incomprehensible noises that disturbed him greatly. He heard the soothing twinkling of slowly melting ice and the loud pop of potions bottles being constantly uncorked. The soft echo of footsteps: some approaching, some leaving, others coming to a halt...

Then there were sentences: utterly bewildering tidbits of information that he'd garnered like a miser, only to feel _cheated_ by their unfathomable meaning. By their baffling lack of real logic. By the... _oddness _of their contents.

He'd heard them in batches. In flashes. In broken, fought-for seconds of complete clarity...

He'd heard them being both shouted and cried. Whispered and raged. Exhausted and defeated. Hopeful. Concerned. Desolate...

He heard Poppy enumerate some kind of exhaustingly long list of ailments: Malnutrition, dehydration, broken rib, sprained ankle, infected lashing marks, infected wound, poison, blood loss, burns...

She spoke with a voice like thunder about hexes of the skin and of the bone. About curses. About some kind of nervous system nonsense... and he wondered absently _why_ on Earth should she become so _agitated_ while giving a very convoluted lecture to only Circe knew whom... In any case, her voice, be it real or imagined, brought him mostly comfort.

He heard someone he could not place: A Healer?. A Potions Master?. Definitely some kind of mightily starchy character elaborating droningly on the properties of one or other poison when in contact with dark magic and he panicked with the sudden realization of what Peterssen was up to.

The aurors must be in on it, too, because he heard Kingsley's deep baritone agreeing to the dastardly plot in hushed undertones. They were going to off him on the quiet!. _Poison_ him in his sickbed and then perform some kind of... marking?... on his body?. They wanted to do something meant to have... _echoes _that were able to... _remain,_ although faded, even after _death._

Luc was here too. _Luc!._ He could not believe the old scoundrel's plan had really worked, but he heard that familiar drawl as clearly as if his oldest friend were right here in the room, sitting beside his bed. Luc often bellowed at all the others, called them all idiots and argued about incomprehensible things like the purpose, control, and _ownership_ of curses. He even whispered, in a hush-hush kind of confidential aside, the one word in his long-winded explanations that made absolutely no sense at all to Severus: _Parseltongue._

What the Hell was going on here?. _Why_ would _Luc_ be in cahoots with the ministry to kill him?. They had forgiven each other outright _treachery,_ for Merlin's sake!.

Sometimes he thought he heard Minnie pleading for his forgiveness.

She told him things about Hogwarts. About the impossibly difficult charms on the ceiling of the Great Hall. About the Room of Requirement having misplaced itself due to some fire. About Albus' portrait _screaming_ at the Minister of Magic. About the castle refusing to accept another Headmaster...

What utter _tosh_ was _this?..._ _Why_ should the castle have to choose anyone new when Minnie was still there?. None of it made a single wit of sense to him which, now that he thought about it carefully, must mean that he had misunderstood her, somehow.

Molly Weasley came to annoy him with her cheerful, high-pitched voice. She shoved warm broth down his parched throat. And apple juice. Oh, Merlin!, how he hated the apple juice... She pried his lips open and poured all kinds of things into him: soups, milk, water, ripened bites of one juicy fruit or another...

She lectured him about his _disgusting_ _thinness_. Raged about protruding bones and shallow cheeks and concave bellies and only The Founders knew what other kind of crazed matronly new fads... He mostly ignored her anyway, as he was in no mood to even _pretend_ to understand what all that ridiculous teenage nonsense was truly about. Killing themselves with _hunger_ in order to stay svelte... what utter rot!.

Draco argued with someone almost constantly.

He gave the same dogged response again and again with a firm, determined tone. "No. _No._ No!. NO!"

"It won't work... Don't!... Are you crazy?.. Potion... The potion... That potion can't... Must find _another_ way. He won't _forgive_ you. _Us._ Any of us!..."

Severus didn't like the distress he could hear in that beloved voice. He didn't like the idea that some bullying scumbag was _daring_ to exploit his precious godchild's natural talent for the craft he'd so carefully taught him. He wondered what Luc was doing that he allowed this... _travesty..._ to take place and attempted, many times, to discern the nature of the discussed potion. His treacherous senses would invariably shut down on him at the worst possible moment, though. Leaving him frustrated and on edge. Utterly _impotent_ to save Draco. _Again..._

Potter was here, too. All the time!... he was always uncomfortably close: touching his cheek, his forehead, his hand... The jerk had even dared to comb his hair once and to read aloud a particularly interesting article on the properties of the Aurgular Blue Fungus in mood-stabilizing potions.

He heard his voice constantly, too. The boy _demanded_ updates from Poppy. _Curtailed_ his time with Draco. _Ordered_ Molly Weasley to let him rest. _Argued_ with Minnie. With Kingsley. With the starchy, professional one. With Luc... He argued again and again. And. Again. AND AGAIN!.., obnoxiously disagreeing with everyone's opinions about poisons, and hexes, and _markings,_ and snakes and Parseltongue... until all Severus wanted was to tell them _all_ to shut the Hell up and go fight somewhere else!.

He heard Potter arguing about other things, too. Things that made no _sense..._ Things that had been dead and buried long ago, like James Potter and Sirius Black. Like old pranks and nightmares and deceptions. He argued with the Bush-Head and the Freckle-King about someone who wouldn't believe... wouldn't _understand..._ wouldn't give a chance... He also argued about _choices_ and _gambles,_ and the _right_ thing to do and ensuring... ensuring... what?...

He talked once about debts. About retribution. About someone's old potions book...

He rambled some nonsensical tripe about _memories,_ and _Legilimency,_ and _connexions_ between heads that had shared everything. Magic... He talked about _magic_ a lot. About _luck,_ and about Albus. He talked about some chambers that he'd restored from the images he'd lifted off a pensive and, at one point, he confessed the strangest thing in the tenderest of voices: Love...

He felt _love_ for someone. Love of the eternal kind, apparently. Love of the painful, _hopeless, _kind.

_LOVE..._ what a truly strange thing to ever confess in the ear of one's former professor!. The perfect Hero of the Wizarding World had spoken that most _intimate_ of words aloud in the quiet of the never-ending night that held Severus himself captive. The boy had confessed the existence of such a huge chink in his armor beside an enemy's sick bed... The whole outrageously _inappropriate_ business was, for one thing, _unusual._ For another just plainly bewildering. He couldn't fathom Potter's reasons to do such thing, unless the object of his affections was among the gaggle of brainless creatures that surrounded him so faithfully... Then the truth finally hit him: Dear Salazar! The menace was infatuated with Miss Granger and _that_ child was so blindly besotted with the latest Weasley disaster that they might as well have been joined at the hip. No wonder Potter's last remaining grain of sense had vanished out the window. The poor, _pathetic_ child!. Lily would have been _devastated..._

Just as he was getting used to being constantly irritated by these confusing specters of his former associates, something happened. Something meant to change it all. He felt the darkness of the memories it brought him long before he realized the actual source of his unease. He was sweating. Trembling. Lost in a world forged on the very worst memories that he possessed: The Dark Lord. The Dark Mark. Blood and curses. Torture. Pain. Betrayal... All of it constantly underscored by that hateful, subtle sound: _Parseltongue..._

He shivered and flailed. Snared, like an insect, in a spider's web. He was being held into position by some kind of thick, mercilessly unyielding bindings that refused to allow him freedom when he _attempted_ to remove himself from the nearness of that horrible sound. Awful, terrible things invariably happened whenever he heard that detested hissing.

He was trapped here. _Bound._ He'd been weakened somehow... Had he been discovered?

Oh, Merlin!, Let the Dark Lord be furious enough to forgo the long, drawn-out torturing routine and head straight for dismemberment if that was the case. He shuddered to imagine what the next few hours would entail were he _not_ to be granted this probably last and very desperate wish. _How_ had he been discovered?. Had he put any of the others at risk?. By Salazar, he hoped not!.

He had _failed_ in his task to protect Lily's son, one more painful regret to add to his exhaustingly long list. He hadn't been strong enough. Cunning enough. Courageous enough...

He only hoped that he'd been at least _tight-lipped_ enough to protect whatever viable plans the Order still had. Whomever's safety rested on the continuing impenetrability of Grimmauld Place. Whatever knowledge the Light possessed about the Dark Lord's little stash of Horcruxes and their ultimate destruction...

The sibilant hissing rose and ebbed with the quality of a chant. This felt like a _ritual_ of some kind. A _requiem. _He knew, then, that this time there'd be no reprieve, no second chance. No forgiveness.

He'd _messed_ up everything, somehow. Big Time...

-I'm sorry, Albus...-

He must have spoken aloud, because the beastly stream of words halted abruptly and a wide, too-warm hand came to rest along the left side of his clammy temple. It brushed aside a lock of his hair that had become irritatingly stuck to his sweaty skin.

"Sssehhh haavs shruus?" A voice that was much softer than he'd expected appeared to be questioning him about something and he wondered for a crazed, panicked, second if he hadn't _misinterpreted_ the situation. Could he be taking part in this... thing... _voluntarily_?. Could he have _forgotten_ that he'd _allowed_ the Dark Lord to... what? Bind him?. Knock him unconscious with some hex?. Blur the sharpness of his usual awareness with some kind of hallucinogenic potion? Could this... _thing_: _Chant._.. _Ceremony._.. _Ritual._.. be one more of those distasteful tasks that he had to _perform_ for his despised Lord in order to remain beyond suspicion "among the faithful" for a little while longer?.

"Sssehhh haavs shruus?" The question came again and it was pronounced more strongly this time, with a tone that wasn't quite so tentative. It sounded like an _impatient, _abrupt hiss and he shivered with dread. He frowned, indecision and deep terror warred for supremacy in the forefront of his mind while his thoughts fairly raced. Was there any chance, at all, that he had _miraculously_ kept his cover?.

His stomach cramped and his skin crawled when he felt the touch again. His hair was being very gently combed, carefully set away from his damp brow. Strong fingers curled slowly around his jaw-bone, tilting his head sideways and a sharp, lacerating pain flared on the right side of his neck.

The groan escaped him before he could suppress it and the dreaded hissing resumed instantly. It descended upon his senses almost ferociously. It felt like being on the receiving end of a veritable torrent of commands that he could not ever have a hope to understand. He was suddenly plunged into the very depths of agony. Something awful, foetid, putrid, seemed to be slithering along the skin of his throat. It was burning him like lava. _Branding_ him like cattle. Seeping from the inside out...

His head tensed: held, so strongly, between a pair of merciless wide hands that he began to doubt again. To worry incessantly. To fear, truly fear, that this... _this_ might be his end.

He attempted to pull himself away but was held fast. He was brutally forced to endure this gruesome torment and submit to this pain that rivaled the Cruciatus. He was forced to remain exactly where he was: Trapped. Weakened. Utterly impotent...

Unlike his usual experiences with his Master's bouts of viciousness, he found himself unable to block _this._ He was _denied_ the relief of blacking out, of closing his mind down. Of fading into whiteness...

And he panicked, knowing that he wouldn't be able to bear this utter torment for much longer. A few minutes, probably not more than ten or fifteen and he'd break... Merciful Merlin!... He was a shameful _coward_. He could not bear the guilt... To _know_ that he'd _succumbed_ so easily in the end was simply... unendurable!.

-Oh, Albus!. You placed your trust in the wrong hands...-

He'd have to beg before he broke, then. It'd be the Order's only chance...

"Ple... Please... My Lord!" He whispered wildly, interrupting that violent torrent of hisses with the last reserves of courage that he possessed, and could have fainted in gratefulness when the pounding, brutal flow of sounds halted once again. There was silence then: Tense. Frozen. _Dangerous_.

Foreign hands moved around his head once more, _cupping_ it now rather than holding it captive. Some sort of soft, wet cloth was being used to wipe the sweat off his clammy brow and his face turned towards it with exhausted gratitude.

"Severus?" He understood his name, then. It was the first sound that had made any sense to him in this long, awful night and his eyelids fought the mighty weight of utter fatigue in order to face whatever monsters lurked beside him among the shadows.

His eyes couldn't open as much as he'd hoped for, but they still blinked apart far enough for him to see flickering flames. No. _No_. A _candle._.. and... a _wand_?. Yes. Albus' wand. He could make out the heavy, leathery cover of a thick, old book that was richly embossed with the Malfoy crest and a bedroom shrouded in gloom and green. So much _green._..

Green like the color of a wet, vibrant Rain Forest. Green like spring, like dewy leaves. Green like Lily.

No!. Not Lily. Like Lily's eyes...

Then there was blackness and pain. Over and over and over again. He became the trapped victim of the most terrible bout of fevered agony and suffered thus for a very long time. Too long. He was imprisoned within this darkness for a whole eternity...

TBC...


	3. Chapter 3

_**THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 3**_

"Severus?"

-There was someone calling him...-

"Severus?"

-Who on Earth could it be?-

"Severus?"

The voice seemed annoyingly familiar. Almost as if he'd heard it all the time or had done so for most of his life...

He frowned. Why would someone have come down to wake him?. Had he forgotten to set up his alarm charm?. Was he late for class already? Panic seized him and his arms flailed in the heavy tangle of bed sheets as he attempted to rouse himself.

"SEVERUS!"

His eyes opened. Brilliant sunlight burned his pupils as he blinked weakly. Too weakly for his taste.

Where the Hell was he?. These were not his dungeons. Wait. That wasn't right... He... He wasn't _meant_ to be in the dungeons, was he?. There were no dungeons any more...

Hogwarts... Hogwarts had fallen!. He'd been forced to open the wards to the Death Eaters and the castle had been invaded. He'd allowed his precious home to be conquered. Besmirched. He'd been forced to leave...

Minerva... Minnie had finally given up on him. She'd tried to kill him!. She hated him now. They all hated him. He'd been unmasked as a traitor...

"Severus?"

He looked up through black eyes that were shrouded with utter pain and searched for the owner of that strangely familiar voice, wanting to discover the identity of whomever still felt that he deserved the kindness of a gentle awakening.

"Severus, is the light hurting your eyes?" The question caught him unawares because it was truly unexpected. Undeserved. _Caring._..

His brow furrowed and he blinked something fierce, trying to force his dilated pupils into early contraction so that he might be able to actually see more than flashes of bright shadows. The legs of some kind of chair dragged noisily across the floor. Granite and wood collided in screeching, ear-cringing disharmony.

Footsteps echoed around the room and then he heard the loud twinkling of heavy rings running across metal. A curtain, then, was being closed on his behalf...

Soothing darkness flooded his reeling senses and his eyes opened wider as his head turned. There was a man standing by the window. Swirling shadows frustratingly silhouetted his form, due to the orange-tinged light that was attempting to break in from behind the beige barrier of the still fluttering curtains.

The room was uncannily similar to the infirmary at Hogwarts and a pang of deeply pained longing closed down his throat with a thick knot.

"Is this any better, Severus?" The voice, the man, the words themselves distracted him and he focused his black eyes on that shadowed form.

"Where?... Who...?" His raspy-toned questions halted as suddenly as his gaze recognized the red clothes. The golden buttons. The utilitarian tool-filled belt. The potions pouch. The prominently displayed wand-holder, fastened along the length of the man's left forearm.

"An auror... You are an auror."

"Yes"

Such simple answer. So... unbending. So unequivocal. So final.

He shivered in response, fingers curling into fists as he attempted to analyze what was wrong here. Something rubbed him the wrong way about it all, making him suspicious and forcing him to frown.

"Aurors don't usually call me Severus" He muttered to himself, unwittingly following his muddled thoughts aloud. "They tend to growl my surname like a foul insult..."

It was then that he remembered: The war had finally broken. The Dark Lord was no more and he himself had been... His hand shot up to his neck, searching for the foul and dirty bandages that he remembered being there and finding them exactly were he expected them to be. Only the pain he associated with their presence was absent now, dulled by the blessed properties of one healing potion or another.

"Where is Peterssen?" He asked the most important question of them all. It was imperative to know at once when his viciously vindictive carer would be allowed to strike again.

The auror's stand became rigid.

"Peterssen is gone."

Wariness settled over him like a thick and overused blanket when the tone of barely restrained violence registered with him and he became suddenly aware of the fact that he was alone. Unarmed. At the mercy of some seriously pissed off auror who seemed to hate him.

"When is he expected to return?" He asked this cautiously. Politely. Willing to offer some courtesy in order to get the answer he desired with the least possible pain.

The auror's right hand twitched in an unconscious, wrathful lunge towards his wand-holder that was halted at mid-motion and Severus felt his heart plummet to his feet. So... this was the answer to the stupid question that he'd been constantly asking himself these last few weeks. This man, so easily angered, so firmly entrenched in the self-righteousness that usually came hand in hand with the uniform he wore, was much worse than Peterssen...

"That waste of magic is not going to come back, Severus. Not _here_. Not _ever._ And definitely nowhere near you!"

The tone warred so much with the man's actual words that he scowled. He became uncertain. Uneasy. Afraid...

"_Why_ do you insist on calling me by my given name?"

A shrug of powerful shoulders. A slight lowering of the head that drew his attention to a wild mop of short, dark hair. The nervous scrape of a leather boot against the stone floor.

"It's your name, is it not?. I once met a man who used to call you by it all the time."

Severus felt himself pale. Angry color rose along the sharp edges of his cheekbones and he took a fortifying breath before he had the strength to force himself into believing that he could answer that taunting accusation without breaking.

"I killed that man."

Surprisingly, the resentful array of hexes he'd been expecting failed to materialize and he floundered in confusion when a heartbroken kind of chuckle took their place.

"I know that"

He blinked, taken totally aback, before inclining his head in as curt and dismissive a motion as he could possibly muster.

"Yes. I've heard it is common knowledge by now"

Silence.

Seconds faded into minutes and a sudden, oppressive tension began to take hold of him. He wished the other man would act already. Reveal his purpose to be here and, then... well... get on with it, for Merlin's sake!. Actual violence always turned out to be far less frightening than the thought of it, in his experience. He held fast to the conviction that the sooner the stranger started to unload all that hatred that seemed to be overflowing his athletic form, the sooner he'd leave him alone. At least until the next time...

"Do you remember the war?"

The question caught him on the raw. It peeled away several layers of his protective armor and poked holes in the crumbling shield he used to protect himself. The very same shield that he had no intention whatsoever of pushing aside any time soon. Not in front of another bitter enemy, in any case.

"I remember _dying_" He responded acidly. Scornfully. With such powerful hatred giving life to those bitter three words that it was a shame how his voice rasped them pathetically rather than snarled them virulently into the expectant silence.

He had not anticipated the flinch that seemed to shake that tall body, nor had he expected the startled exhalation of air that exploded from the auror's throat like a gasp being suppressed.

"I'm sorry!"

Those two words shattered his composure. He had not been prepared to hear them. Could not imagine _why_ his very unwelcome visitor would even bother to pronounce them, unless they were meant to mock him...

"You should be. It didn't work very well"

He was shocked by the sudden flash of uncontrolled, powerful magic that shook every wall in the room with the force of an earthquake.

"Don't say that. Do. Not. Ever. Say. That!"

He frowned in alarmed recognition of that sullen, demanding tone:

"Potter?"

The other man didn't deny that crazy idea. His wide shoulders squared. His head shock just once in a curt and almost challenging assent before a few firmly taken steps closer brought him out of the gloomy range of the curtains and into Severus' viewing range.

"I'm sorry. I didn't realize you hadn't recognized me"

Green eyes locked with his own and he felt the God-awful touch of Legilimency.

"Do not dare!" He snarled viciously. Turning his head brusquely to one side in order to avoid being breached. His shields felt weak and ready to crumble. He supposed that the dammed sickness that had plagued him since he woke was managing to undermine his usual mental strength, much in the same way as it was weakening him physically.

The boy had the grace to flush and a pair of slightly trembling hands rose in the air, palm out, in a soothing and apologetic motion.

"It's not my fault!. I find it very hard to keep you out while you are this weakened..."

Severus' hackles rose. He detested the very idea of this... this pathetic little whelp finding him wanting in any way.

"What the Hell do you want, Potter?" He decided to attack the brat, as viciously as he possibly could, in the hopes of sending him away. The boy flinched. Wide green eyes flashed with bitter wariness as that unfamiliarly mature voice muttered darkly.

"Not _this_ again!"

Severus frowned.

"Again?" He repeated that one word stupidly. Bewildered, despite himself, into demanding some sort of explanation from the irritant before him.

Potter's tone could have killed Dementors when he stated very coldly:

"We've done _this_ before, Professor. Don't you remember?... I was your worst nightmare!"

A tension headache began to unfurl behind his right eye as he attempted, and failed utterly, to make sense of that cryptic statement.

"I hate to be the one to burst your bubble, Potter, but if we ignore for the moment the fact that you usually manage to irritate me right to the very edge of murder... I must point out that you have always fallen quite short of the threshold that would turn one of my dreams from merely _unpleasant_ into the actual realms of nightmare, let alone one of my worst!"

"Oh!... Mmhm... Really?"

Puzzlingly, the tension that had been ready to snap those wide shoulders in two suddenly vanished and incoherence returned to the flushed, unfamiliar face of this grown version of the child who had, against his every expectation, managed to actually... _live._

"How did you do it, Potter?"

He dared to venture that one question in the quiet moment between one of the boy's owlish blinks and the next. Figuring that he might as well get the answer to one of the millions of questions that had been circling his mind incessantly since he'd woken up to discover himself trapped within the cursed walls of Azkaban's infirmary.

Potter's expression gentled and he approached, almost as if he was willing to satisfy whatever little point Severus' legendary curiosity could be bothered to address.

"How did I do what?"

Severus swallowed, suddenly uncomfortable with the foreign emotion that was turning the child's voice so grave. His whole frame stiffened in unfavorable reaction to the unnerving nearness of the imposing auror who was towering, ever so casually, over him.

"Survive. How did you survive?... Albus..."

He managed the name, but had no strength to continue. Not so soon after re-awaking. Not while in the company of one of the very few who'd been present on that tower the night he'd performed the most heinous of his crimes...

His nostrils flared violently. Jaw locked into unyielding rigidity by the strength of his own emotions.

His eyes searched, and found, the fluttering edges of the beige-colored curtains and fastened to them as if he'd find in their uninteresting blandness the eternally sought-after spark of knowledge that could finally explain the very origins of Magic.

"It's O.K to miss him, Severus. He misses you too, you know?"

"Do not speak of Albus to me!" He'd attempted to roar the words and was utterly embarrassed when his shattered throat only managed to produce a wavering snarl that in no way managed to reflect his all-pervading resentment.

Potter's expression hardened like steel.

A silence that was long, heavy and as poisonous as Mercury built impregnable walls between them both in the blink of an eye. After a minute or two of hard, huffy staring the auror sighed. Seemingly tired of the status quo.

"I survived because the Horcrux I carried was weaker than I was, Severus. There was only one Avada Kedavra. Only one life that could be taken. It came down to a choice between the single, mangled, piece of the Dark Lord's soul that my scar was harboring or the whole of mine..."

Severus' eyes widened in sudden and relieved understanding:

"The curse took the easiest way out... They tend to do that. It's one of the basic principles of Magic. New hex creation revolves around the idea..."

A small smile curved the boy's lips.

"That's what I've been told. Yes."

A wave of bone-melting relief washed over him as his mind pondered the thought in the ensuing calmness. He had to close his eyes quite tightly in order to ride out the utter, grateful joy that threatened to overwhelm him. Albus... Albus must have suspected the possibility of _this_ outcome at the very least. Dear Salazar!... he, himself, should have realized the potential right away. He had the knowledge after all. He'd used it constantly over the years as he pandered to his insatiable need for independence. For self-protection. Tirelessly developing offensive curses that only he had access to...

"Severus?"

His thoughts came to an abrupt halt as the voice suddenly reminded him of the boy's presence. His eyes narrowed in horrified suspicion when an even more awful question rose to the forefront of his mind. One that Peterssen had repeatedly refused to answer every time he'd dared to ask it.

"How did _I _survive, Potter?. I remember dying!"

The green eyes dulled with some kind of deep-set regret that Severus found disturbing.

"It wasn't me, professor!. I wish to Merlin it had been, but the truth is that I failed you completely on that account. It was Draco. He heard me accusing Voldermort of killing you and set off to find your body. You were barely alive and he was wandless, but he... Oh, God!... Turns out that he is as clever as you always claimed he was and he has an affinity with your wand that allowed him to cast that all-important stasis spell. We would have lost you, just... _lost_ _you,_ if it wasn't for Draco..."

Severus was taken aback by the depth of feeling that drenched every single syllable of that response. To realize exactly how upset Potter would have felt at being deprived of the opportunity to see him rot in Azkaban for his transgressions brought a sudden lump of ice to his dark heart.

Surely, certainly, his demise should have become his fitting punishment. Unless, of course, the fates agreed with Potter and considered the death of a traitor to be too merciful for the likes of him...

His head lowered in shame. His pulse pounded against his wrists with force enough to break him and he thought that he must have finally, _finally,_ reached the lowest point in his life.

"Potter..." He whispered the mighty auror's name with exhausted, defeated resignation. Totally ignoring the sharp, startled widening of those steadily darkening green eyes.

"What do you _want,_ Potter?. _Why_ are you here?. How are you planning to make me pay for the unforgivable?..."

There was a startled growl. A foreboding narrowing of those emerald colored eyes and then the boy threw his hands up in the air in a sharp and frustrated gesture.

"I told them it'd be a waste of time!"

Severus didn't know what to make of that one sentence. Didn't care enough to bother unveiling it's convoluted nuances. He was tired. He was broken. He wanted to be left alone with his own misery.

His fists closed in a reflexively defensive motion when the boy strode suddenly close, angry challenge turning the clean lines of his young face into a stony mask of unfathomable feeling.

"What would you say, Snape, if I told you that I've come to understand that _you_ were Albus's greatest weapon, a far better one than I, myself, turned out to be?. One without which the side of the Light would have failed miserably to win the blasted war?"

-What the Hell?-

"Do not mock me, Potter!" He snarled, so viciously, that the child froze were he stood.

Those green eyes that were so similar to Lily's searched his angry features for a heartbeat too long before the auror's shoulders sagged with frustrated defeat.

"Why would I mock you?. YOU, who saved my bloody life more times than I can count?. Why would I want to humiliate the man who saved most of us, at one point or another, for God's sake?"

He didn't _like_ the tone with which he was being spoken to. Screamed at, as if he were some kind of dim nincompoop utterly unable to even grasp the most elemental of truths. He was not going to allow this... this nonsensical _drivel_ to irritate him into giving this jerk the perfect excuse to pound him into next month that he was so clearly searching for.

"I saved your life. You'd like to repay my kindness by visiting my glorious bed-side in Azkaban and gloating all you can at my discomfort, I see... This is unexpected even for you, Potter. Such exquisitely devious revenge doesn't normally capture the imagination of the run-of-the-mill Gryffindor, but then one mustn't forget that you were never truly prone to follow the rules..."

The idiot's eyes goggled and he gasped in outraged denial of the accusation but Severus was past caring. His eyes had narrowed like poisoned black darts and his lips spilled nothing but pure hatred into the pulsing, tense silence.

_"Nothing_ that you can ever dream of doing to me will touch me, Oh, Great Saviour!. Not. One. Bloody. Thing!. You are an unimaginative little worm, lacking the true mastery of those who took pains to train me in the fine art of torture, boy!. You think that you can come to my sick bed and frighten me to death?. You couldn't possibly become any more pretentious, Harry Potter!"

He laughed so coldly, so harshly, that he saw the rugged auror's face first pale, then crumble.

"You think that I'd...?. Severus, I..."

"Do _not_ do me the discourtesy of using my given name without permission!. That privilege was _never_ meant for _enemies_ of any kind"

Green eyes, puzzlingly darkened to the very edge of unutterable pain, flickered as the boy blinked very slowly, very _carefully._ With that same kind of deliberate cautiousness that Draco used to employ during his late teens, whenever he was _attempting_ to prevent himself from crying in front of him.

"You might have been _mine_ at one point but I was never _your_ enemy, Professor. Not really. I was your mark all along. Wasn't I?. I'm the reason why you remained alive after _she_ died. I am the reason why you plodded on at Hogwarts, through year after year of teaching children that you had no desire at all to instruct, biding your time and keeping up old friendships with the darkest characters of our world.

I was never your enemy, Severus Snape, but I was yours to hate. Wasn't I? I was _yours_ to protect and yours to devote yourself to. I was yours to die for, because that's how SHE died and you couldn't let go of her for long enough to try fighting for your own happy ending!. You. Wanted. To. Die. Just. Like. She. Did!"

Bile rose up the back of his throat with every snarled word that the blasted creature dared to utter. With every single second that he forced his dark eyes to remain locked onto the emerald twins of his beloved Lily's. With every painful truth being so rudely exposed, so painfully dragged out into the uncomfortable sunlight. He had _never_ detested _anyone_ with as much venom as he despised the man before him now. His whole frame had just frozen into utter rigidity within the very first seconds of that brutally cruel dissection of his most precious feelings and desires. He felt _wronged_ and _abused._ He felt _sickened_ by the idea that this... this bitter grown-up version of the child he'd once protected could read the very depths of his dark heart quite that accurately.

"I despise you, Harry Potter!"

He spoke the words quietly. Clearly. With the kind of conviction usually reserved for the basic truths of life: One's name. One's loves. One's faiths...

He saw the auror's face pale, as if he'd been struck by the deadliest blow of all, and those emerald colored eyes darkened minutely before dulling with the empty shadows of despair. He saw the visible shudder that ran all along the rigid frame of the man who stood so belligerently not five paces away from the foot of his bed and also noticed how the golden-toned skin of that young throat contracted jerkily once before expanding slowly around the boy's Adam Apple, as if he were attempting to swallow whole the very sword of Gryffindor.

"I knew that too, Professor"

That wasn't the answer Severus had been expecting to hear. Not the words themselves, nor the irking neutrality of the boy's tone and definitely _not_ the strangely _restrained_ quality of the puzzlingly intense emotion they seemed to be... hiding?. Hinting at? .

His ebony eyes narrowed suspiciously before raking through the entire room in a useless bid to distract himself from his own puzzlement. He wanted this ordeal to be over. This conversation brought to an end. This whole... episode of... of... Revenge?. Spite? Good, old-fashioned psychological torture?... to be done and shoved in the past already!.

There was silence for a long time as he searched the utilitarian room for some kind of clue as to where exactly in Azkaban he might have been taken to, but the place was so disconcertingly similar to the Hogwarts' infirmary that he wrestled once again with the kind of wrath that could very easily consume the dammed child, if he so much as _spoke_ another word.

Albus... Albus would have been so disappointed. He'd defended and pampered his precious Gryffindors with such zeal... He'd allowed Severus himself to become _disillusioned_ with the kind of world that he'd wanted to create, one where the secret of a lion could be allowed to outweigh the safety of any snake... and all of that for what?... He'd die of shame if he where here. Witnessing the unprecedented cruelty that Severus was being currently subjected to by the greatest lion of them all: his precious Golden Hero. The Boy with the Power of _Love._ What utter tripe _that_ had turned out to be...

Delicate twinkling invaded his gloomy thoughts and he turned his head around once more, towards his captor. Potter held an empty bottle in his right hand. Left one curled around a squat glass that contained barely a mouthful of a liquid with the color of sunlight. Severus tensed. He hated men who drank at any hour, deeply resented those who did it while still angry and couldn't abide anyone who'd dare to indulge in the harmful sin of alcohol this early in the morning for any reason at all.

"I want you to remember that I _tried!"_

The auror growled that puzzling sentence in a tone as hard as bricks before tilting his glass up and drinking deeply. Severus could not quite quash his sense of dread. Hi dark eyes widened with terror before fixing tensely on the strong lines of Potter's features as the man drained his shot. All kinds of crazy thoughts began to whirl in his mind as he saw that strong looking hand lower ever so slowly, until the glass thudded against the surface of a table.

-It's _one_ drink, Severus. Just one drink- he reminded himself firmly while his riveted gaze followed the downwards path of that hand with focused attention. - One drink alone doesn't turn a man into a monster like your father. One drink alone won't incite Potter to hurt you, he has no need of liquid courage to...-

"Do you know were Draco Malfoy is, Severus?"

The unexpected question brought cold chills to his clammy skin and he blinked very slowly. Very carefully. Trying to remember what he'd learned about his precious godchild, courtesy of Peterssen.

"I haven't seen him, if that is your question, auror Potter. _Why?_ Has the boy become Azkaban's newest gaoler?"

There!. He'd sounded harsh and uninterested enough that no one would ever guess the agony of worry that had gripped his entrails upon hearing that brutally asked question.

Potter laughed cynically. A cold and calculating sort of light had now entered the emerald depths of his unnervingly intense gaze.

"Amazing!" The boy whispered in bitterly mocking wonderment and started to clap sharply into the ever-increasing tension that was steadily filling the whole room.

"Four years locked into a magical coma that would have fried not only the instincts, but also most of the memories of every other wizard, and you still have it in you to lie to my face like the scoundrel that you are!"

He turned to stone upon hearing the accusation. The Arctic tone. The spiteful disdain that those words were so very clearly trying to convey. Dark, blank eyes settled once again on the now empty glass, wondering how it was _possible_ for such a small mouthful to turn around the whole demeanor of the man so drastically. Transforming him from outraged baboon to belligerent, cold-blooded shark in the blink of an eye .

Potter followed his gaze and smiled darkly.

"Ah!, I see that I've _finally_ gained your attention, Professor. Haven't I? Now I want to secure something quite different. Something more... _difficult._ I desire to obtain your _cooperation_"

There was something not quite right with this little scenario...

Potter... Potter was acting out of character. His every word. The tone of his voice, even the frozen quality of his emerald colored gaze seemed false, somehow. Fragile.

Severus was certain that he was missing something. Something important. Something quite obvious. But he couldn't quite grasp what that something might be...

"I am afraid I do not follow"

The small smile that bloomed on that young face was brittle and hard. Merciless.

"You. Do. _Not._ Follow..."

A shiver ran all along Severus' spine as the words coiled around him like a promise of death. His hands closed in two fists, white-knuckled and impotent, without a wand to hold on to.

"What would you say, Severus, If I told you that you've been uncannily right all along, as usual?"

Pale, pink lips compressed into a thin slash as he attempted to control his growing temper.

"_Why_ won't you get to the bloody point, Potter?. I had conversations with muggle wallpaper that were far more enlightening than _this_!" He snapped in a frustrated, angry snarl that brought a bewilderingly satisfied smile to the bloody brat's lips.

"I am concerned about the fact that you _won't_ really get what you deserve in Azkaban, Severus Snape"

Inky colored blankness stared straight into that rugged face and saw only hatred.

"Yes, I know. We've covered this ground already, Mr. Potter. You are allowed to skip along to the parts not yet discussed, you know?. Endless dissertations on the nature of revenge tend to be _distasteful_, if you'd care for my opinion."

Potter frowned and looked down. He seemed rather lost for just a second. Then that wild mop of hair jerked upright once more, almost as if pulled by some kind of invisible string, and those eyes speared him win renewed determination.

"I decided long ago to become the man who'd give you your just desserts"

"So... you have come to kill me, after all..."

Severus smiled then, somehow relieved at his own fate. But also saddened by the fact that they had all been so wrong about the boy: Albus and Lily. Minnie. Hagrid... He only hoped that Potter had the good sense to cover his own tracks. He'd be glad to take this secret to his grave, if it meant that those last two would never have to find out that he... he'd been right all along about this creature. There was far more of his dreadful father inside Potter than anyone had ever cared to admit...

A strange brightness turned the boy's eyes to glittering green jewels.

"Death is not what you deserve"

He faltered then, wrong-footed, and his eyes shot black daggers at the auror's deadly pale face.

"What do I deserve then, boy? Flagellation?. Dismemberment?. A public stoning?" He challenged the brat with savage brutality.

Potter looked quite sick. Strangely feverish. Detached from the situation and, at the same time, weirdly focused. He took a frantic, sudden step forward before halting the motion abruptly, turning his face away to stare towards the door with a thunderous frown. He seemed to be fighting some kind of inner demon and Severus felt relieved to see that, even if they had all been mainly wrong about the boy, there seemed to be at least a smidgen of a conscience behind that ruthless façade.

"I want to have complete control over you. You'll live with me. Sleep were I tell you to. Eat the food that I give you. Work on what I see fit. Speak only to those I allow you to speak to...

I want you to be as powerless as I was while in your care!. As powerless as Albus Dumbledore was left while his wand hovered in the air before your face and you _knowingly_ turned the deadliest curse of all upon an unarmed, old man..."

The words hit him like the lash of sudden Crucio and he felt them fall across his soul like deathly blows. A knot closed down his throat. His eyes smarted and a painful, awful shame swallowed him whole.

"Do you _think_ you can match me for cruelty, Potter?" He sneered in defensive retaliation, challenging the bastard to back down with every single ounce of determination that he possessed. He had to force Potter into a retreat right _now_, before one of them became harmed beyond repair.

"You have the heart of a hero, or so I have been told. _Nothing_ that you can possibly come up with can damage _me_ more than it would damage _you_. Your morals will know sin. Your soul will become tainted. Your very sense of self will become twisted out of recognition, darkened and poisoned beyond all possibility of recovery... Am I really _worth_ destroying any of that?"

Those green eyes turned around once more and speared him with an intensity that flayed him. A pale face that was rigid with unyielding determination twisted viciously to spit aloud the very first words that the auror screamed since he took that blasted drink:

"You are worth _EVERYTHING_!"

His heart pounded as that pair of crazed-looking emerald eyes raked him from the top of his disheveled black head to the blanket-covered legs that felt like water. He was painfully conscious of the shocked, pained sorrow that he could feel raising like an unwelcome wave from the very depths of his battered heart to the forefront of his absolutely livid mind. He... he'd dedicated his whole life to guarantee this _creature's_ survival and the ungrateful runt _dared_ to throw away the very essence of the soul Lily had loved enough to die for, on a lost cause...

"I am afraid that my _cooperation_ isn't on offer. I am quite settled right here, in Azkaban, Mr. Potter. Why don't you go jump off the first cliff you come across and let me enjoy the peace and quiet of my spa retreat for a while, Eh?"

The sarcasm was as flawless as it used to be. The delivery was a perfect combination of snarling distaste and utter disdain. He was proud of his own quip, although it was obvious that the little bastard was about ready to throttle him and Severus allowed himself to rest his aching back against the fluffy mound of pillows that some industrious soul had stacked up behind him while he'd been asleep. He felt so smug in his own certainty that there was nothing, absolutely _nothing_, that the little terror could _do_ to force his hand that he allowed a small taunting smirk to curve the edges of his thinly pressed lips.

"Cat got your tongue, Potter?" He goaded the livid-looking auror and felt not a spark of fear when the man took a single menacing step forward and hissed through his teeth.

"I am not playing a stupid game with you, Snape. I'm going to get exactly what I want from you, by fair means or foul!"

He hadn't laughed quite so hard in so long that he'd forgotten how utterly exhilarating the feeling could be. He felt absolutely _liberated._ Exquisitely _free_ for the first time in his adult memory. He did not give a toss about how grim his situation might become after a mightily pissed off Potter stormed out of Azkaban, leaving him to the care of far harsher men.

The important part was that, for now at least, he could be free!. He could _choose_ his own path. He had nothing to lose, nothing to live for. He had no future to truly abandon. Nothing and no one to fight for any more... His job had been done and his life now was over. As for the rest... The rest would be just pain. He could take pain without even blinking, almost without feeling it. Without really suffering too much from it any more... A few years under the tender ministrations of dear Peterssen and he'd finally, _finally_, join Lily. And Albus... Specially Albus.

"What could you possibly _do_ that would convince me to submit to your cozy little scheme, Potter?. Are you planing to threaten me with The Kiss?. Do you really think I'd care?" He challenged the auror bluntly, just because he could.

Potter's frown deepened and his eyes turned deadly when he agreed with Severus' own assessment in a tone that could flay dragons.

"No. I don't think that you'd care."

There was a second or two of strange, reluctant doubt as the auror's jaw clenched tightly and he seemed to steel himself, as if readying for battle. There was a clammy appearance to the boy's forehead and he exhaled a puzzlingly shaky breath before he uttered the only words that could have ever turned these odds back in his favor. The only words that Severus himself had never expected to hear falling from the lips of the Wizarding World's Savior. The only words with the power to still Severus' own hand and bring him, kicking and screaming, right where the blasted bastard wanted him...

"But you'd care if it was Malfoy facing the Dementor. You'd sell your soul to me, to Voldermort, to Morgana herself if it was your own Godchild the one to receive The Kiss in your stead and you had one single chance of preventing that from happening..."

TBC...


	4. Chapter 4

_**THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 4**_

He detested this vile creature with all his might, with whatever fragile wisps remained of his heart and soul. He despised him with his every breath. Loathed him with a murderous rage. Hated him so completely, so _utterly,_ that he _failed_ to _think_ of an appropriate enough answer to that horribly accurate statement for a second or two.

Silence stretched like a blanket of fire within this cursed room and the tension that rose between them felt like the initial, sickening quietness of a magical duel: it felt dangerous. Unwelcome.

He'd been lethally threatened. _Lethally!._ He'd been hit by this viper of a man when he'd expected a retreat and now lay, destroyed beyond salvation, before his enemy. He was figuratively bleeding from the kind of deep wound that no man ever recovers and he knew it. It had been his own fault, of course. Within the private confines of his mind he dared to recognize his own failings in this debacle.

-Constant vigilance, Snape!- The words seemed to mock him in the sharp, screechy voice of the now deceased Alastor Moody and he shuddered at the aptness of that thought. After years of being on his guard every waking second, he'd failed _completely_ to protect himself before the very same child that he had found wanting so often in the past.

He'd cried victory _too_ _early,_ underestimating this particular adversary in the very same _unpardonable_ way that had cost the Dark Lord dearly and, just like his erstwhile master, he'd been _challenged,_ _demolished_ and _defeated_ without any mercy. He'd been utterly _crushed..._

Black eyes zeroed in on the victor as he stood, barely five paces away from the foot of his bed, like a frozen statue. He was young and seemed _harmless,_ at least to a man like himself who had spent so much of his life with the likes of Mcnair and Greyback. Rodolphus Lestrange or any of the Carrows.

Potter wasn't like any of them. He looked pale and... _heroic._ His eyes shone with the kind of fire that only those fighting for justice ever seem to be able to call forth. His mouth was tightened into a determined slash that spoke of the kind of strength that wouldn't _willingly_ bend. His cheeks were flushed with temper. His posture rigid, unyielding. He was young and good looking, clean shaved, athletic... He was a perfect blending of tanned, muscled physique and fierce willpower.

In no way did the dratted brat remind him of Bella. Or the insufferable dog. Or the thrice-dammed James Good-For-Nothing Potter, for that matter. He didn't even look like Albus...

Yet he was worse than _all_ of _them_ in his own way. For _none_ of the others had _ever_ managed to deal him the same kind of crippling blow that the man before him had just delivered. He'd been wounded, truly wounded. Brutally stricken at the very center of his heart, his very core...

This was a sin that only _Voldermort_ himself had ever committed. One against which he'd rebelled, so savagely, that he'd turned himself from a murderer into a spy almost overnight. He'd done that many years ago. For Lily. For love to her memory. To atone for a crime that he'd committed against her and had never, not _ever_, forgiven himself for...

What wouldn't he now do for the child he'd loved like his own since he'd first held him?. For the son of his closest, most loyal friend?. For the only person on Earth who'd never truly betrayed him?. Never truly _denied_ him?. For the one who had never, not ever, given up on him?. Draco had only ever loved him. _Him!._ With his million faults and idiosyncrasies. He'd been accepted by his godchild and cherished so _utterly,_ so _completely,_ that he'd discovered peace, at long last, within himself. He'd come to accept his monstrous darkness because Draco had done so and, if his godson could love him as he was, then he had _no_ intention of proving that boy wrong, or making him feel _ashamed_ of him. _Not_ _ever..._

"You wouldn't dare!..." He choked out at last, and the words seemed to _explode_ in the tense silence.

Potter's smile was vindictive. Hateful. Cocky.

"Will you _risk_ it, then, Professor?. Will you call my bluff and see him lose... his _soul?"_

The foul words hovered between them, taunting him with their terrible threat and he all but shivered. His black eyes became frozen chips of onyx-colored ice and his right hand curled tightly into a frustrated fist that _ached_ for his wand.

"Are you really _attempting_ to convince me of the fact that _you_, _Harry_ _Potter_, defender of kittens and fluffy Hufflepuffs alike, have the kind of darkness necessary to send an innocent boy to the Dementors?"

The emerald gaze did not falter. The smile froze, though. Turning into an angry curve that spoke of virulent emotions.

"Malfoy is not a boy, Professor!. Not any more at least" The rebuke was voiced harshly. Crudely. A cutting whisper that felt like the shout of an enraged banshee "He is not truly innocent, either. He was a Death-Eater. He saw _plenty._ He did _little_. And now he is _free_."

Severus' mind recoiled. He felt dread for the first time before this stranger who seemed to have taken over the hapless child he had once known.

"If Peterssen is to be believed, then the war has been done with for a long time. Four years should have been long enough for Draco Malfoy to craft a life so far removed from the past _entanglements_ of his elders that _anyone_ wanting to cause him harm should have to work very hard, indeed, to be successful"

Potter's jaw squared. His shoulders acquired a newer, even more threatening rigidity, and his voice rumbled with disbelieving anger when he challenged:

"Are you calling me a _liar_, Snape?"

Severus's heart froze. His mind seized for a second in utter, terrifying indecision.

He was _gambling_ heavily indeed!. He was playing with a fire that would burn _Draco._ His Draco...

But he'd fought for far less worthier prizes in his life and, even if he were remotely inclined to try it, the simple truth was that he didn't even _know_ how to stop fighting and surrender. _Surrendering_ wasn't an option that he was _willing_ to contemplate in this case, anyway. He'd have to risk _everything._..

He took a very deep breath before attempting the daunting task of forcing his drying tongue to utter every single syllable of his response:

"The child Dumbledore cherished wouldn't have, _ever_, threatened another with Dementors"

The smile that curved the boy's cold lips was a terrible and bitter thing. It was touched by darkness.

Those young eyes that looked so much like Lily's shone like chips of green colored ice.

"Dumbledore was known to _cherish_ the _wrong_ kind of child, professor. I thought _you_, better than most, would have remembered _that!"_

"You have no _right_ to touch Draco Malfoy!. If it's me you want, Potter, then you have no issue with him whatsoever. How _dare_ you attempt to blackmail me, using such foul means against a man who has done nothing to you?. _Nothing_!. May I remind you that he actually _saved_ your useless life, when Mcnair brought you to the Manor?"

Potter suddenly paled. His shoulders hunched slightly forwards, as if mortally wounded. Eyes that were so green they resembled the enchanted canopy of the Forbidden Forest after a good rain, widened with unspeakable horror for a long drawn-out second.

"Yes. He saved me then. And I saved him afterwards from being burned to cinders by Fiendfyre. I'd say that particular debt was paid with plenty of interest, Professor!. He's been clean for a long time. His father too. Those are men who can turn with the tide and remain constantly afloat. But I'll _sink_ him if I have to. If you make me"

There was a second, a horribly strained second, when he felt as if he'd been sucker-punched in the gut. He gritted his teeth as the bastard carried on blatantly threatening to harm what his heart held most dear and became certain that he'd throw up at any second. He forced his agitated breath under control. His burning eyes into a dry, hate-filled stare. Tried to marshal his whirling thoughts into the kind of cold and calculating mind-frame that had saved him from death time and time again, but the words, those awful words, continued to spill forth from the lips of Albus' pet hero:

"I can do it as well, Snape. So very easily. It won't be any trouble at all for the Head of the Auror Department, the Saviour himself, to dream up a few dastardly plots of Malfoy Junior's and have him pay for them. _Dearly._

I'll do it for no other reason than the fact that he is your only _weakness_ and I. Want. You!"

He'd been turned to stone by that last sentence. Condemned so completely into puzzled immobility that he could not even _blink_ to relieve the awful burning that was turning his dark eyes into burning, prickly, intolerable torturing devices that he could no longer withstand. His throat pounded with the effort of holding in the rather overwhelming wave of sheer rage that was threatening to erupt into destructive reality from the very depths of his being. His thoughts whirled and he wondered what had happened to the boy he used to know. What was wrong with Lily's child. With Albus's boy. With Minnie's pride and joy? How had _that_ Harry Potter turned into _this_ monster?.

The silence that followed crushed him completely. It festered like the foul thing that it truly was: a weapon. A poison. The most elegant demonstration in the fine art of intimidation that had been directed his way in a very long time.

Potter waited him out, looking patiently at him through emerald green eyes that were focused and merciless. He started to blink very slowly. Breathing carefully in and out in a valiant attempt to stall for time that was ultimately useless, as each second slid relentlessly by, became another...

There was something _wrong_ with him. Something utterly flawed. Something that _kept_ _him_ from devising any effective scape plan from this deadlock. He _knew_ that there must be at least one, but his mind was gripped by terror for his godchild's safety. He could not _think._ He could not _analyze_. He could only feel and what he felt was anguish. Desperation. Frustrated _defeat..._

His eyes closed for a small second in the kind of trembling, exhausted _vulnerability_ that he bitterly _regretted_ even as it happened. He lacked the _strength_ to carry on with the impassive act any longer and that small action would reveal his shameful weakness to his opponent. He could _feel_ the change in the atmosphere of the room almost at once, heard the very slight rustle caused by the predator who watched him as it shifted it's weight from left leg to right. Relaxing it's stillness for the first time in minutes. Scenting weakened prey...

"Severus?"

His given name, pronounced once again by that foul mouth, was a sign of heart-wrenching defeat.

"What would you _do_ if I say I don't _believe_ you, Potter?" He heard himself ask through numb, echoing ears, conscious that this would be his last shot, fired into the encroaching darkness of defeat.

"I'll walk away. It will take me a few hours, a day at the most, but I'll make sure that you receive a front-row invitation to the execution by Dementor's kiss of one Draco Malfoy. I'll watch you from across the aisle as you lose him forever, and we'll _both_ be thinking exactly the same thing"

Ebony eyes, widened in unutterable horror, zeroed in on the fiercely glittering emerald gaze of the maddened _Saviour _and he shivered with dread, with the kind of _terror _that not even the Dark Lord had managed to instill within his soul.

"_Nothing_ will matter to me at that point, don't you understand?. Whether you sacrifice yourself for him and Malfoy lives, or you let him fall and regret it with every breath that you take after he is _gone_ I still win, Snape. I'd have dealt _you_ the harshest punishment there is. The only one that'll make you truly _suffer."_

His heart halted there and then, because he genuinely _believed_ that this vile creature would behave just that cruelly. It was apparent to him that a man like Potter wouldn't have _suddenly_ come up with a plan as vicious as this one without having put a lot of thought into it. A lot of accumulated hatred...

His chest rose in one last agitated intake of breath before he found enough courage to speak once more. Every word that he uttered was a _gift_ to his godchild, a reluctant acquiescence to this monster's dark plans for the sake of the boy who loved him without restrains. Without conditions...

"What are your terms, Potter?"

Surprisingly, the auror paled when the question rent the air. There were shadows: horrible, _bitter_ shadows turning that emerald gaze into a muddy, washed-out green. There were lines of untold _anger_ turning that jaw-line to stone. There was such a _rigidity_ to those wide, athletic shoulders that for a wild second he felt as if Potter's back might actually snap in two.

"So it is _true_, then. You'd _sell_ yourself off for him in a _heartbeat!_. All that attention that you gave him back at Hogwarts... It was _never_ an act to fool Voldermort, was it?. You _love_ that little Ferret!"

Severus blinked in exhausted, wary affront. He could not _understand_ what the Hell was wrong with the dammed bastard!.

"What are you whining about now, boy?. Wasn't that your bloody point?" He growled through gritted teeth. He was not in the mood for the brat's stupid games. He was feeling utterly wretched. Devastated. Dizzy... There was an excruciating throbbing in the region of his wound that had begun to pulse almost continuously. His throat felt parched, raw, and his nerves were shot to Hell. All in all, he could not cope with any more ridiculous _nonsense_ from the little jerk before him.

"I... Yes. Of course!. That has been my point all along. It's just that... well, one thing is to _imagine_ that someone like _you_ might care that deeply for another person, but to have it so _brutally_ confirmed is just a tad _overwhelming_!"

Severus' headache became a thing of nightmares. His eyes narrowed to thin slits as he attempted to surreptitiously avoid as much of the bright sunshine that was flooding the spacious room as he possibly could.

"Someone like _me._.." He repeated the awful sentence very quietly. One word lowering into the next with pained resignation. "Yes. I do imagine how shocking it must be for all of you, shiny _heroes_ of our world, to be confronted with the fact that we, _scoundrels_, do love too!"

For some reason Potter's hackles rose. His eyes iced over between one owlish blink and the next, and his lips thinned.

"My _terms_ are very simple: while you are in public you'll conform to the image of you that I so _carefully_ crafted while you were trapped in your coma"

His senses reeled at the utterly _incomprehensible_ nature of that request.

"_Image_? Of _me_? What on Earth...?"

The auror chuckled. Bitter mirth returning to replace the strange _harshness_ that had invaded his features mere seconds ago.

"Ah, yes!. I forgot that you still don't _know_ about that part... You've been very reluctant to fall into place with my initial design, so I'll have to explain this to you from the beginning..."

He watched as the boy lowered his head towards the floor and became promptly lost in gormless contemplation of those shiny boots he wore. There was something rather _disturbing_ about the tense little silence that followed. It had a _sad_ kind of quality that Severus, in his current state of mind, could not concentrate enough to ponder on...

"Four years ago, when I discovered that you'd survived, I decided that whatever fate the Wizarding World chose to grant you would probably never, _ever_, come to match my own idea of what you truly _deserved_"

"Yes, I had that point. You've been, so far, nothing but _generous_ with your opinions regarding the matter. Why don't we skip ahead a bit, Potter?"

Golden-toned fingers curled in two white-knuckled fists that shook with temper:

"Do _not_ interrupt me again!. I'll say my piece and I'll do it in my own time and with my own words. You don't get to rush me along and bully me into making a stupid mistake just because you can play the scornful, irritated bastard of a professor so well. I have now lived four years without you, Snape!. I have met far worse characters than you could ever fake to be. I've grown up while you've been sleeping and _now_ your old tricks are nothing but _pathetic_ little _smoke-screens_ I can see through..."

Something cold and quite, quite _frightening_ shivered down his spine upon hearing that fiercely gritted rebuke. His brow broke out in uncontrollable sweat, his lips thinned as he forced himself to swallow down the insults that had risen to the tip of his tongue and he stared straight into those glittering green eyes with undiluted hatred.

"I see. Please... do proceed, auror Potter"

"I've spent a considerable amount of time and resources into convincing _everybody_ of the fact that you: the rightfully _despised_ professor Severus Snape, have been nothing but a sickeningly self-sacrificing little _hero_ all along. I spun a tale of almost Hufflepuffian _loyalty_ to Albus Dumbledore. Told everyone about the tragic _passion_ that you felt towards my mother, about the unrelenting bullying that you were subjected to in school and how _that_ led you down your dark path at the worst possible time..."

A vein began to pulse in his sweaty temple, it's painful throbbing increased to devastating intensity with every single word that was pronounced. His heart _froze_ into a cold lump and his mind shorted.

"You did... _WHAT_?" He could feel the strength of that scream ripping through the healing tissues of his damaged throat but there was nothing, _nothing,_ of the absolute _fury_ rampaging through his every cell at that particular second that was either _controllable_ or even _appeaseable_!.

"Severus!..."

"You!... You took _my_ life and _KNOWINGLY_ made a _MOCKERY_ out of it?"

Potter's face was chalky. It was ghostly-white and frantic, like the visage of a panicked little child.

"You must _calm_ _down_, Severus!. Your throat needs to rest or it might close off again. Last time you almost _died..._"

"Die?. Do you _think_ I won't _welcome_ such an outcome?. Don't you think I'd love to rip you off the opportunity to shred my dignity to ribbons with your cruelly-conceived _revenge_?. I'd rather leave you hanging than give you the satisfaction of turning me into some kind of... of what exactly, Potter? A tragic hero of your own devising, in public, and some kind of pathetic little _house_ _elf_ at home?"

The boy flushed to the tip of his ears, emerald eyes lowering, in shame, back to his shoes.

"Something like that"

Severus laughed so hard that he hurt his neck again. His throat burned. His lungs seized and his heart ached so much that he... he would have gladly given the bastard the satisfaction to see him _cry,_ if only... If only he'd believed that it would be over. _All_ _of_ _it_: The paying and the regretting. The eternal, grueling _awareness_ of his own lack of _worth_ in the eyes of those he'd tried so hard to keep away from harm...

"Do you really believe that I want to be _held_ in high esteem by the bunch of brainless twits that find nothing wrong with turning your every word into some kind of Holy Truth for the masses?. Do you think that... what?... That I _crave_ that kind of attention, like some kind of pathetic little _nobody_ who can find nothing of _value_ within himself? I don't need your _conjured_ image of me to add fake worth to my existence, Potter. I know my exact value to the very last knut!"

The fierce, brutally combative glint was back with blinding force in those eyes that looked so much like Lily's...

"Do you?. _Really_?. Well... _Allow_ _me_ to disagree on that bloody point, my dear Severus!. I don't _care_ for your scorn about my reasons. I don't even care for your outrage. But I do care for my word!. I gave it to create the _illusion_ of a man above reproach. Of a man able to _die_, able to _kill_, for an ideal. I gave it before witnesses. I've have been continuing to give it for four long _years._ And I'll be hexed to Hell and back before I allow _you_ to destroy all of my effort with the first bad-tempered comment to fall _thoughtlessly_ from your _foul_ _mouth_!'

Severus floundered. He gapped like a landed fish as his ears rang with the _humiliation_ of having been so utterly brought to task by the child. He could not bear to look into those eyes. He could not trust his lips to remain closed around every hurtful retaliation that he could certainly deliver in response.

He had been _chastised_ in the most _debasing_ manner that he could conceive and he was _raw_ with the shock of it all. He closed his burning eyes and his painfully throbbing neck drooped slightly, giving out the impression of a man who had just been fatally wounded. Regulating his agitated breath took all of his concentration for a second or two and he attempted, truly _attempted_, to bring his almost volcanic ire under control. The task was a struggle, though. A battle he was losing...

"Severus?..."

There was a note of concerned inquiry in that anxious rendition of his given name but he could neither trust it nor address it. He _resented_ the familiarity with which the boy referred to him. Distrusted the false worry. Shied away from the horrible certainty that this... _this_ confusing mix of unreasonable hatred and instinctive consideration would be his lot in life when things were done. Potter would be to him what his father had been to his own mother: a disturbing, frighteningly inconsistent master. Violent one second, shatteringly gentle the next...

He didn't _know_ if he could _survive_ such a thing. Not when he'd seen in painful, heart wrenching detail the exact results of those kind of mind games.

"So I am to play the hero while in public. Anything else, _master_?" He challenged scornfully, so brutally rebelling against the barely-there thread of gentleness present in the auror's tone that the man himself took a single, uncertain step backwards in surprised disconcertion. Green eyes raked through his features as if digging for lost treasure. Examining him with focused attention in order to asses him further, analyze his every response. Gather, from his own ugly features, even more _ammunition_ that could be mercilessly _used_ against him.

Well..., He was _done_ with this game!. He was _done_ with giving the blasted jerk exactly what he wanted. The man wanted him to _fight._ To _suffer._ To _drown_ in this pit of mortification that had been so very carefully created just for him. He was going to show this little child just how _unwise_ it really was to poke a wounded snake with a stick. From now on Potter was going to become intimately acquainted with the reason why he'd been such a successful _spy_ for over twenty long years. He could play the servile little _toe-rag_ like the pro he truly was. He could play it so _faithfully_ that there would be no _satisfaction_ to be had by the great Saviour. He was going to show Harry Potter that even in submissive acceptance there is rebellion to be planned. Resistance to be delivered and poisonous hatred to be allowed to fester...

"Do not call me _master_!"

The request was as incensed as expected, of course, and he felt like smiling through the lump lodged in his throat, as he allowed his dark eyes to lower in a perfectly respectful little bow.

"As you wish, auror Potter"

"You will accept my invitation to spend the rest of your convalesce at my home and you'll expressly _insist_, to your _godson_ in _particular_, that this development _pleases_ you!"

There was a thread of belligerent challenge present in those words, an almost contemptuously gleeful expectation of rebellion that he had no intention of providing. Not any more...

"As you wish "

He offered the same little sentence once again without lifting his eyes. Without flinching at all. Without allowing the virulent rage that was filling him completely to so much as being _hinted_ at in his own tone.

Blankness... He has blankness and obedience once again. He was nothing but a servant. A devoted, brainless entity with no heart to feel, no mind to think. With no pride to be injured for as long as his detested new _master_ remained before him. He would do this again. For Draco...

He'd become _this_ once more and he'd _survive,_ somehow. Just to spite _Potter_!.

"You will reside at my house and, while you do, you shall _not_ _ever_ leave a question of mine unanswered. You will _not_ _disobey_ a direct order. You will treat _me,_ and those I call my _friends,_ with the _respect_ that we deserve and you will never_,_ not _ever,_ abandon my roof in order to live somewhere else"

He was so _relieved_ that he could have snorted at the absolute stupidity of the creature. These directions were so vague that even a half _blind,_ totally _dumb_ and _deaf_ first year Slytherin could find a way to circumvent them in most circumstances. He was neither blind nor dumb. He was very definitely not deaf. He was no first year, either. But he was _Slytherin..._

"As you wish."

Potter's sigh was a symphony of frustration. It was impatient and pleasantly irritated.

"Will you stop _that_ already?"

He did not dare smile, vindictively or otherwise.

"Stop what, auror Potter?"

A couple of footsteps echoed forwards. There was sudden pressure on the edge of the mattress as a pair of tightly clasped, golden-colored fists appeared at the very edge of his field of vision.

"_Look_ at me, Severus!"

He took a deep breath before complying, mentally waving goodbye to peace of mind. To rest. To the simple enjoyment of allowing himself the respite of being hated by people he'd never cared for, never protected. People like Peterssen and the million others just like him. Then his gaze rose to fix on Potter's affronted visage with blank politeness.

"You might have to _rethink_ this new creepily _docile_ _thing_ you've got going on... It won't work with me, you see?. I _know_ you. I grew up under your shadow. I've endured your temper and have been on the wrong end of that cutting wit of yours more times than I can count... I've been inside your head. Inside your pensive. I saw those memories you gave me, your very worst I'm sure, again and again before I decided to return them to you. I know _who_ you are and I know what I'm doing. _Nothing_ you can _try_ will _mess_ with my head, Snape. _Nothing_!"

He blinked right into the idiot's flushed face very slowly... The weary, bored drag of his eyelids that managed to convey without any words needing to be uttered how utterly unimpressed that ridiculous speech had just left him was an absolute work of art:

"Your point being?"

Potter was so incensed that his jawbone crunched audibly. Those fists dug into the mattress as if attempting to burrow right into the filling and the boy's eyes, those beautiful emerald eyes that Lily had given him, flashed green fire before the brat took a single calming breath:

"All right, have it your way!" The response was angry, yes. It was as frustrated as Severus had been expecting it would be, but it lacked viciousness.

The auror's face scrunched in pained concentration, as if he were listening to his own thoughts through a thick, wide-spread fog. His lips thinned and his shoulders shook as he shot a step backwards. Then he straightened himself and looked down towards his feet for a very long time...

When he _finally_ came back to life it was to walk around the bed with forceful steps. He stopped suddenly, right in front of the bedside table, and quite _rudely_ decided to sit on the mattress itself.

Severus' whole frame became rigid stone from head to foot. He resented the boy's proximity with every fiber of his being. Potter was just _too_ close to him. So close, in fact, that he could _feel_ the heat coming off the auror's body starting to warm the left side of his own, through the thick layers of bedding that covered him. He lifted his own legs up in a clearly defensive motion. Stubbornly applying as much pressure as he could infuse into the move, in order to release the trapped blankets from underneath the boy. His chest swiveled slightly to the left when he finally forced himself to face the child. A defiant ebony stare glared daggers of pure hatred across barely any distance at all from behind a flimsy fortress built from trembling, knobbly knees and crossed off arms.

"If you are planing on accepting my terms then I'm afraid you'll have to swear a Wizard's Oath"

The little bastard smiled at him before blatantly _daring_ to plop his unwelcome hand over Severus' barricading knee, as if to mock him for the effort.

He shuddered with repressed ire and his gaze lowered to those golden digits that were resting upon him. The weight of that hand bothered him _totally, _it unnerved him and _challenged_ him to shake it off as soon as he could possibly manage it. He stared at it with so much dislike that the appendage twitched.

Relaxed, uncurled fingers slowly curled against his thin kneecap forming a tense claw-shape that dug very slightly against the mound of bedding keeping their skin apart. Pushing mercilessly against the flimsy barrier that was keeping that _inappropriate_ contact from finally tipping into the wrong side of _decency. _He desired so strongly to be able to strip that tanned skin off those offensive fingers that his dark, ebony eyes flashed with sheer poison.

"Severus?"

"A Wizard's Oath does _not_ require your _loathsome_ touch upon my knee, Mr. Potter!" He intoned frostily. Raising his pale, drawn face to offer the other man a glimpse of his unconsciously discomfited expression. The hand tightened around him for an intolerable second before finally pulling away.

A wry smirk twisted the lips of the little jerk upwards as that messy head shook from side to side as if in wonder. Short, spiky dark hair fell against that strong profile, obscuring the expression painting shadows in those bright green eyes from Severus' scrutiny.

"You'll swear, then?"

"I shall keep to your public story. Accept living in your home with delighted glee in front of my godchild. Respect you with bovine fervor. Obey your direct orders and remain under your roof at all times, in exchange for Draco's _permanent_ protection from overzealous auror investigations. Is that it, Potter?"

Lily's child turned towards him once again and proceeded to study his resentful features with uncomfortable intensity.

"_This_ deal remains a secret between us. Nothing that ever happens within the confines of it is to be discussed with any other at any point."

He gapped at the idiot.

"You believe I'd ever confess that I'm to be your house elf of my own free will?"

There was an angry flush slowly spreading across the frustrated young features of the lauded hero. Those young lips opened, as if to deliver some kind of scathing remark, but were very firmly snapped closed at the last possible second. A tense silence reigned in the room. It was heavy and tension-filled. Expectant.

"I do _swear_ to comply with your demands, Harry James Potter. I do swear it upon... what? My magic? My Life? What would _you_ _like_ exactly?"

Emerald eyes, widened with what looked impossibly close to dazzled _disbelief,_ settled over him. The boy blinked very slowly and his whole face turned pale. For an utterly bewildering second he seemed ready to bolt and then he swallowed. His shoulders squared determinedly, as if readying himself for a fierce battle, and a wand that Severus could not recognize was pulled off it's holster and pointed straight at him with unwavering purpose.

"You'll swear on Malfoy's life, Professor!" Potter growled, so viciously, that Severus felt like flinching. Only a lifetime of practice hiding his reactions kept his gaze blank. Emotionless. Utterly empty of any thought and fear.

"I do swear, then. As a wizard. I swear on Draco Malfoy's _life_ that you shall have your God-damned revenge. I'll give you the obedience, the cohabitation, the cloak and dagger secrecy and the sanctity of your public word respected, just as you've demanded of me, Harry Potter!" He spat the words with scornful venom, with all-pervading hatred come to life in his dark tone, and the wand glowed as that bastard held his forearm fast. Linking them together with a grip as strong as iron.

"I do accept your Wizard's Oath, Severus Snape. On Draco Malfoy's life!" The auror intoned with a touch of utterly incomprehensible fury and, even though he narrowed his black eyes in puzzled disconcertion, he had no time at all in which to contemplate that bewildering development before the magic of the oath began to pulse.

He'd expected the unwelcome binding magic to become ferociously negative. Had prepared himself to suffer once again the same kind of unbearable pain that had enveloped his arm every time he'd been stupid enough to agree to a Wizard's Oath in the past...

The feeling currently cursing through his arm had nothing in common with any experience he'd ever been on the receiving end of, though. There was unfamiliarity to the magic, yes. But there was also a puzzlingly _recognizable..._ warmth. A touch of something that his own magic _trusted, somehow._

It felt warm and welcoming. Like the long absent touch of a friend, finally returned home after a great absence...

The binding itself coiled around his arm in threads of gold. Of red. Of gently pulsing white. It did _not_ rip across his flesh with searing, ever-darkening harshness painted in grays and blacks and purples.

His eyes widened in shock as the thickening tendrils of the spell coiled and coiled around their clasped arms. Weaving them together with the kind of delicate gentleness that he'd only ever read about in books that he hadn't cared to touch in a very long time. Books about oaths that pertained to other, gentler things. To the kind of emotions that had their opposite in hatred...

"Potter!" The bond grew and grew and _grew... _It went past their clasped arms to coil around their shoulders. Constantly spreading inwards, towards their chests and heads. He felt it reach deep inside him and it's almost... _affectionate..._ nature made him panic. He rebelled against it with all his might, attempting to reject it, and the colors turned brighter, fiercer, stronger...

His face paled when his eyes rose to clash with the boy's and found him smiling in awed wonder. Terror gripped him and he attempted to disengage himself, but was stubbornly forced to hold on by the tanned fingers of his enemy.

"Potter, something is _not_ _right!_" He barked in frantic desperation, pouring _all_ of his considerable will against the bond. His head started to pound and the muscles in his arm began to finally experience the unendurable pain of a proper forceful oath. Sweat began to bead in his ashen forehead and a cramp that was powerful enough to cripple him seized his trapped limb from wrist to shoulder..

"Severus, what are you doing? Don't fight it!"

As if through an ever-darkening tunnel he heard that ridiculous advice and felt like crying. What was the idiotic child _thinking?._ Didn't he realize that the nature of the spell was... _corrupted?._

His teeth ground in stubborn concentration as he set to _repel_ the fiercely glowing tendrils that seemed _intent_ on tying them together in the most threatening manner. Things would have been so much easier if the bloody Potter had _bothered_ to help, but judging from his ridiculous advice...

"Oh, Hell!..." He croaked out weakly when he felt his mind finally give. His arm succumbed to the strength of the magic pushing against it and he felt his bones shatter. Awful pain flooded him completely, bringing his waning concentration in an out of focus. He could hear the panicked screams of the young auror over the distressed sound of his own heavy breathing...

"Severus! _Severus_!. You have to go with it, you idiot!'

-No!- He thought to himself: a savage and uncompromising rebuttal. A rejection. A stubborn _resistance_ against the intent of the magic that surrounded him.

"_No_!" He heard his breaking voice utter the thought aloud, turning it into _reality_ the moment he brought his objection into abrupt and rebellious life. It was then that the magic turned violent. It became almost f_erocious_ in it's clear determination to force him into accepting the purpose that had brought it forth. He was nothing against it. _Nothing_!. He was a mere _human_ _being._ A single, wounded wizard.

He had no chance to win the battle he had picked and, as he felt the shockingly strong energy course through him with implacable might and realized that his treacherous body was irremediably _succumbing_ to it, he believed, truly _believed_, that he had played his last foolish card and that this time... this time _nothing_ and _no_ _one,_ not even _Harry_ _Potter_, could save his worthless hide...

TBC...


	5. Chapter 5

_**THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 5**_

He returned to full consciousness abruptly. Painfully. Mind disorientingly filled with dimmed memories of horribly cruel nightmares and hurtful threats. His senses reeled at the disconcerting feeling of emptiness that seemed to engulf him and, for a second, he wondered if the strange things that he remembered could have been real after all. Was there even the remotest chance that Potter... _Potter!_... had attempted to bind him to a fate of virtual slavery and managed to finally kill him, instead, with the power of a badly corrupted vow?.

The thought was so ridiculous that he felt like snorting and only the very real agony that his body seemed to be in prevented him from so much as blinking at that second. So... Peterssen had managed to surpass himself with some as of yet still to be remembered form of new torture and he'd... fallen into a nightmare-filled bout of unconsciousness that had scared the little shit badly enough to dump him in the magic-dampening cubicle, if the awful feeling of crushing emptiness that he was currently experiencing was to be believed. His chest rose and fell at regular intervals as his mind attempted to pinpoint exactly which part of his body had received the blunt of the healer's brutal _attentions_.

-Sweet Merlin in bright green bloomers, but I feel like a _flattened_ _pancake_!- he thought derisively, only a second before he realized what that strange, heavy warmth that enveloped both, his left arm and the right side of his neck, truly meant: wards...

Someone had placed protective wards upon his person, over the worst injuries that he could find within his body. These wards were pulsing with gentle, healing energy. The kind that no self-respecting Medi-wizard would ever place over a patient unless they had become...

"_DRAINED_, POTTER!. _Magically_ _drained_!. How on Earth is it possible that he survives Azkaban's vicious little medic -under whose care _your_ people placed him, by the way- with _only_ severe trauma but ends up on the very verge of _DEATH_, once. Fighting the onslaught of a seriously dark ritual for well over a week straight after that and then, to top it all off, manages to lose EVERY SCRAPE OF MAGIC THAT HE POSSESSES the moment he is placed under _your_ care?"

Draco... That was Draco. He would have identified that voice, among a million, in a heartbeat.

Ebony colored eyes shot open with the urgency of the frantic. His gaze raked the white room he found himself in, barely registering anything beyond fact one: _This_ wasn't Azkaban's magic-dampening little hole and fact two: Draco was not _here..._

"Malfoy, you've got to calm yourself down or they'll throw you out of here!. The healers are already pissed off with me, you see?. I don't think they'll allow us any more..."

"THE _HEALERS_ ARE PISSED OFF!..." Draco sounded beyond incredulous. He sounded livid to boot. His tone turned savage with his very next breath when he hissed furiously:

"The Medi-wizards are _not_ your biggest problem, Potter!. Believe me when I tell you that I'm about a millisecond away from removing your entrails through your nostrils, at the very least!. You... useless _moron..._ you've endangered my..."

"Malfoy..."

"Do not "_Malfoy_" me!. Not after _this._ Not when I _know_ how badly you have harmed my Godfather!. If anything, _anything_ at all, happens to him, Potter... I will hunt you down to whichever hole you crawl into and put the family's precious collection of dark curses to good use over your hide!"

Severus fairly forgot his aching muscles, his weakened legs and the fact that there were all kinds of things currently attached to his ghostly-white limbs in his haste to abandon the bed.

His eyes, which were widened with disbelieving horror, fixed on the doorknob and refused to move from it until he could feel it's reassuring coldness underneath his curled fingers.

"Malfoy, are you _crazy?._ Do you know how many people have just _witnessed_ you threatening me?" The horrified little hiss that was Potter's response dried his mouth with utter dread as his worst fears came to life. He had _not_ dreamed the ghastly conversation with the mightily pissed off auror at all. It had been _real_!. He... he had _consented_ to... _slavery._.. for the good of his godson and now... now Draco was out there, seriously wrong-footing the bastard who'd dared threaten his freedom, his very life, in the worst possible way imaginable!. He felt like screaming out, in rage, when his weakened hold could not immediately manage to turn the doorknob open. He fought frantically with the blasted thing as his precious godchild's reply reached his horrified ears in the very next second:

"_Threatening_ you, Potter?. I was not merely _threatening_ you. I was _promising_ you the most painful of all de..."

"DRACO!..."

In his head he'd shouted the name. Roared it, really, through a haze of sheer terror, set on nothing short of silencing the young boy at once!. In reality, though, his vocal chords had failed him utterly, refusing to inject the sound with any strength at all. Forcing a fragile and broken croak out of his lips, just as he'd _finally_ managed to pry the blasted door open, but it had been enough...

His pale face reflected the most distressed kind of warning as he glared, straight into the beloved features of his one and only godchild, only to find that the frightened boy he remembered was no more. Draco had grown in the four years that he'd lost and the visage of the man who'd turned towards him, as if pulled with an accio, had no more resemblance to the childish features he remembered than the faint glow of a candle-flame has to the sun.

"Godfather?"

There was incredulity painting joyful shadows within the steadily warming gray eyes that, despite their change, still held the same expression. The same affection. The same devoted kind of love that they had always held whenever their gaze had been directed towards him. A weakening wave of dizzying relief shot through his body in the very next instant and, although he had to hold tightly on to the half-opened door in order to remain upright, nothing and no one could have prevented the dazzling smile that broke across his face as his dark eyes returned the warmth contained in the boy's look.

"Draco, I..."

"What the Hell do you think you are _doing_ out of bed? Actually, how on Earth are you even _awake_ at all?. The healers gave you enough Draught of the Living Dead to put down an army of Hippogryphs for half a year..."

Potter's ill-timed whining _dimmed_ the magnificent joy he was experiencing, casting shadows upon the absolute perfection of his much longed-for reunion with his beloved godchild...

Draco's face fell, his brow furrowed and he lurched anxiously forward, placing perfectly careful long fingers upon the door before peering worriedly around it. Gray eyes that were now much more reminiscent of Luc's own than they'd ever been before settled thunderously upon Severus's white-knuckled grip around the doorknob and a muscle visibly clenched on the blonde's perfectly shaved jaw.

"I am deeply _touched_ that you've done me the _honor_ of receiving me at your door, Godfather. I am _grateful_ for the courtesy and humbled by this gesture, but I... I've been standing here for too long, arguing with this... idi..."

"Draco! "

Severus' gentle smile became rigid as he attempted to cut short the obvious insult with a nervous glance in Potter's direction. His heart plummeted down to his toes when he spied the thunderous scowl the auror was directing towards the blond and he felt himself pale when his precious godchild shrugged his admonition carelessly off and continued:

"Potter here has drained my energy with his tiresome lack of wit, Godfather..."

He was so busy worrying about the vengeful jerk's possible reaction to that thoughtless jibe that he didn't even _notice_ Draco's gentle arm curling around his waist until it carefully supported his weight when the door was pushed, very delicately, open. The doorknob fell away from his grasping fingers and he felt utterly unbalanced and weakened all of a sudden. Draco's grip around him firmed, it steadied him and focused him when his legs attempted to let him down once more. His brow started to sweat when the effort to remain upright began to take its toll and it was with the deepest _gratitude_ that he felt Draco turn his obvious hold into a loving embrace at that humiliatingly painful second.

His long hair fell across his paling features, obscuring his visage completely and that was when the wide shoulder of his godson suddenly appeared before him, silently offering him welcome solace. He hid his face within the familiarly scented creases of the elegant robe that Draco was wearing as the younger man slowly dragged his stiff frame into a tight, heartfelt embrace. Allowing him to regain both, his balance and his strength, against the quiet support of that strong body.

"I am so glad to see you stand, Godfather... I'm overjoyed to hear your voice, to feel you return my touch with one of your own... You have _no_ _idea_ of how much I've _prayed_ for this moment to come!"

He sighed contentedly, allowing his tired forehead to rest an instant longer against the disconcertingly tall frame of the man Draco had become.

"I have missed you too, Draco" He whispered very quietly, loath to expose such private sentiment to the vicious scorn of a shamelessly voyeuristic Potter.

He could feel that green gaze digging painfully angry daggers into the back of his skull. Casting its derisive little aspersions over the intimacy of an encounter that he had no right, at all, to witness and he bristled at the indignity of the scrutiny. Did the bastard have no sense of decency left?. No concept of privacy?. No clue as to how _offensive_ it was for him to stand there and... _gape_... at them, as if they were the very worst kind of slimy insects just because they happened to feel affection for one another?.

A sudden, unpleasant discharge of agitated magic jostled his wounded arm when the ward that protected it reacted unfavorably to the blond's attempt to handle the limb. He gasped in shocked agony, taking an involuntary step back and barely managing to _hide_ from the other two his utter dismay at having dragged their attention back towards his pitifully weak state.

"I'm sorry, Godfather!. I didn't realize that the shield has also a protection spell on it or I wouldn't have touched it" Draco's distressed apology reached him as if through a thick veil when the meaning of the blasted ward that he was carrying suddenly sunk within his consciousness. Horrified ebony eyes, widened with devastated understanding, rose to stare blankly into that shadowed gray gaze.

"_Drained_... Draco... I. Am. _Drained_!"

He felt it then like a fist to the gut: the _emptiness_ of magic... His magic. All magic. The _absence_ of the _force_ that had always been there, inside him. Around him. Beside him. He was now... _empty..._ of it. _Alone,_ for the first time, within his body!. _Bereft_ of the great gift that he'd always treasured, the only _grace_ that his broken mother had ever bestowed upon him. The beautiful, precious entity that had always, a_lways_, set him apart from his beast of a father...

He was not aware of the stricken expression of horror that was clearly visible in his shocked stare. He was not conscious of the way his whole frame shivered, of the fact that his skin had lost all warmth and all color, in the blink of an eye, as his very face twisted into a mask of devastated mourning.

"My _magic._.. I... I have _LOST_ my magic!..."

His voice wavered and flickered with the force of his emotions, like a powerless candle-flame fighting uselessly against a blizzard and, although he remained upright through sheer stubbornness, he felt himself crumple pathetically from the inside out.

"NO... No!. It's temporary, Godfather!. It's only _temporary._ This is a reaction to some kind of magical backlash. I've just spent an hour talking to Healer Jones... Do you remember her? A tall witch with curly brunette hair and soft blue eyes?... "

He could see right through Draco's tactic. His boy was trying to distract his mind with tiny details about some silly nonsense in order to ground him through the shock, but it worked. His reeling senses took hold of the details, tried to assemble them into some kind of useful information and he was grateful for both, for the distraction itself and the chance it gave him to bring himself back under control. He had to master himself at _once_. He had to do it right there and then, before he allowed himself the miserable _indignity_ of breaking down in front of Potter!.

"Laura Jones, Hufflepuff. She was particularly gifted in Herbology and Arithmancy. A total terror near my Potions, though."

Draco's smile was visibly strained as it valiantly fought not to wilt.

"Yes. Yes, that one!" He agreed, coming a single step closer in order to take gentle hold of his good arm, just beneath his elbow.

"Did you know that she studied medi-magic?. Trained in Switzerland of all places, she's become something of an expert in ailments of The Core..."

He frowned, his dark colored eyes were focused so intently on Draco's face that he simply mirrored the blond's steps when he began to move towards the bed.

"Draining is not an ailment of The Core, Draco" He pointed out in a toneless little whisper that seemed to shatter his godson's fake composure. He blinked agitatedly before finding the necessary strength to add the next devastating detail with a quiet, terrible finality:

"Magical Draining is a _permanent_, _irreversible_ condition caused by the corruption of one's Aura..."

"No, Severus!. No!. Your Aura is just as pure as mine. Or _his._ Your magic has not been _tainted_ into annihilating itself. I swear it!. I... I had to shut it down... I. Had. To!. You were becoming distressed under the onslaught of too much power"

Potter's unwanted intervention forced him to look around and stare right into a pair of shadowed green eyes. There were tears in those eyes. Crystalline, beautiful drops of liquid misery that were poised ready to fall from thick dark lashes.

"Do not _lie_ to me, Potter!" He snarled at the bastard. Infuriated that even _now_, in this most distressing set of circumstances, the jerk _dared_ to mock him so blatantly with a bare faced lie.

"No wizard can ever shut down another's magic. It's just... not _possible_!"

Emerald fire whirled within the confines of those shimmering green eyes:

"No other wizard could defeat your blasted Lord, either, and there he went: all the way straight to Hell on my command!"

That answer blind-sided him completely. Knocked him totally off balance even as it gave him hope. His every muscle turned to stone with sheer stress and his ebony eyes glittered almost feverishly as he half lurched, half turned towards the auror. His injured shoulder collided with Draco's and the painful shot of defensive magic that lashed outwards from the shield that was covering his whole left arm, from shoulder to wrist, almost brought him to his knees.

"Harry, shut up, for goodness sake! Can't you see that your presence here is distressing him?"

With a face like thunder Lily's child growled determinedly:

"I. Am. Not. _Leaving_!"

Blatantly ignoring the auror, Draco's hands settled with careful gentleness around his waist once more. Mindful of the ward that still flashed agitated blue sparks all along the surface of Severus's broken arm.

The limb throbbed now steadily and he gritted his teeth fiercely. Concentrating on keeping it as far away from his godchild's body as he could possibly manage while, at the same time, allowing the younger man to carefully steer him towards the bed.

His throat betrayed him when he finally sat upon the mattress and a groan that was half a sigh of relief and half a hiss of pain rent the increasingly tense silence.

"Godfather?"

A world of worry and affection had been freely poured into that one-word-sentence and he attempted to curve his shaking mouth into some kind of reassuring smile that must have failed abysmally, if Draco's crestfallen expression was any indication. His neck had started to throb with the strain of holding the rigidity of his posture for so long and he allowed his shoulders to slump forwards ever so slightly, without bothering to look up. His black eyes closed and he exhaled deeply, bringing his aching head forwards in a swinging arch that set free the long locks of his dark hair. Allowing the black tresses to fall around his ashen face, like an all-obscuring curtain.

There was silence all around him. Oppressive, distressed silence and he felt like hurling both youths outside before bolting the door closed so securely that not even Merlin himself could possibly open it.

He wanted to be alone. He _needed_ to be alone. He _desired_ the reprieve of giving vent to his tightly suppressed emotions that only complete privacy would grant him. But, of course, like every other thing that he'd ever truly needed or wanted in his life, complete privacy was simply not on offer at the moment.

"Godfather? Godfather... Please, talk to me!"

He could feel Draco's attempts to force his head upwards from it's lowered position. Long, careful digits curled gently around his chin and tried to pull it up. He resisted the silent request for as long as he possibly could. Only complying with the increasingly frantic tugs when he sensed the boy's legs bowing slightly, in preparation to lowering their owner down onto the floor.

He could not... would not, _ever_, allow Potter to see Draco on his knees...

His head shot up, trembling chin submissively resting upon the boy's gentle fingers, but it took all of his strength to force his eyes open.

"I... I am all right, Draco" He uttered the lie with a blank and devastated voice. Unable to dig up the strength to infuse the disaster that was his speech with the kind of force needed to make it sound, at least, not so dismally croaked.

The beloved gray gaze softened. It looked down at him with the kind of devoted affection that only Draco had truly ever granted him so freely.

"No, Godfather. You are not all right yet, but you will be. I promise."

He wanted to believe the soothing words so badly that his whole frame shook with embarrassing emotion. His eyes darkened with the sorrow of those who know that, whatever fortune there's to be given out to every man trough fate, it had never so much as _touched_ him during this lifetime. Good luck was simply not meant for the likes of him.

"Draco, I don't think... "

The thin digits still holding his chin wandered upwards, pressing gently against his lips to bring his words to a halt.

"No, Severus. No!. I... Harry is telling you the truth. We don't _know_ how it's possible, but he seems to have just... _shut_ _you_ _down,_ like a faucet. Your magic is all _there,_ I swear it!. I've seen _proof_ with my own eyes. Jones showed us all the scans"

His heart faltered as hope blossomed within his soul for a brief second. He felt dizzy with the _joy_ of knowing himself to be... still _complete._ Still a wizard. Still special...

Then the idea of Potter, _POTTER,_ having apparently untold control not only over his actions, but also his magic, froze him to the spot. Turned him to stone. Paralyzed him with terror, as he remembered the man who'd so coldly threatened to destroy whom Severus himself most valued, out of merciless hatred for him. What _wouldn't_ a man like that _do_ with the kind of unexpected power that he now held over his enemy?. Ebony colored eyes searched for Potter and when his gaze clashed with the emerald fire that was glittering so fiercely within the auror's thunderous gaze all hope shriveled. Potter hated him. _HATED_ _HIM_!. His magic was as good as gone. It had been stolen...

"Godfather?"

Draco's reassuring smile faltered when he failed to respond. His head shied away from the soothing, calming touch of his godchild and he swiveled around, lifting his aching legs up onto the mattress and single-handedly pulling the thick mound of blankets over himself when he was done. His dark eyes avoided all contact with both boys as he all but sagged against his mountain of pillows with a silent sigh, ignoring, for the moment, the bewildered and hurt expression that had appeared in his godson's eyes.

"I am tired, Draco" He offered finally. Four flat-toned words that somehow managed to set the air around him ablaze with barely contained frustration.

"Your magic is not lost, Godfather!. Didn't you hear me?. _All_ of it is still there! It's only just... _unreachable_ for now. Jones assures me that you'll make a full recovery"

Draco's increasingly frantic voice was wrecking havoc with his composure. He did not know how much... _stress._.. he could endure before he finally broke and, in all honesty, he'd rather not do so before these two. He swallowed painfully, the very act a battle for supremacy against the tight knot of tension that seemed to be slowly suffocating him from the inside out.

"I _heard_ you, child, and I am..." His words faltered as he searched for a word to fit this nightmare. He needed to find something reassuring enough to still Draco's obvious worry and, at the same time truthful enough not to be only fabrication. He had never consciously lied to his godson with either words or actions and was reluctant to do so now.

"You are...?"

Draco had picked up on his prevarication and now pounced on the weakness like a wolf scenting blood.

"I am _relieved_" He finally offered firmly. Deciding to settle for the simplest version of the truth with a weary whisper. Forcing himself into the kind of calmness that he was worlds away from feeling, he turned his aching head and allowed his black eyes to stare straight into Draco's suspicious ones.

Worry and bewilderment met him head on. There was love and there was sorrow, panic, hope, indecision... There was stubborn mulishness and protective loyalty. There was fierce doubt...

Silver colored shadows turned that gaze to steel in the blink of an eye and the sweet boy that he'd known all of his life was transformed into a stony-eyed stranger, so reminiscent of Luc, that he felt as if he'd been plunged into a past that he had no wish to ever revisit.

"There is _something_ you are not telling me..."

His good shoulder failed to raise and fall as smoothly as he'd intended, but the shrug was as recognizable a gesture as it'd been clumsy.

"I am tired" He repeated stubbornly. Obstinately holding on to his excuse like a crab holds it's shell, lets it shatters before him, leaving him open to the _unthinkable_ vulnerability of full exposure...

Pale hair shone like stardust as his boy cocked that dazzlingly blond head of his slightly to one side, studying him intently.

"Very well. We'll let you _rest _for now, but I want you to know that this is not over, Godfather. Whatever it is, I'll make it better. I swear it!. _Everything_ is going to be all right now that you are back, you'll see. Just... hold on a little bit longer, please."

He could not meet those eyes. He would not meet them. He knew that Draco was distressed and suspicious and, maybe, more than a little bit frustrated. But he himself felt as if life had just chewed him up and spat him right out on to the gutter, without so much as a by your leave. Silence grew as both slytherins waited for the other to fold first, but neither did. Leaving each one feeling wrong-footed and uneasy.

"We'll let you be then, Godfather. Sleep well. I'll bring Mum and Dad later to visit and we'll _talk_ then"

Black eyes blinked very slowly and the elegant blond's hands curled in two impotent fists that betrayed his worry.

"I'll look forward to it, Draco." Was all he managed to say and knew, just _knew_, that his act had been an utter failure. His godson shot him a look before moving away from the bed, then whirled around to face the door and stood there for a second too long with his stiffened back turned towards the room, as if attempting to convince himself to walk away.

"Come on, Malfoy... give the man a break!" Potter forced the issue by reaching over Draco's shoulder and opening the door for him, all but ushering a very reluctant pureblood heir out into the corridor with no subtlety at play.

Just before closing the door the auror turned around and stared at him for a brief second.

There was a look in those green eyes that Severus had never seen directed towards him in all his years. It was a look filled with _purpose_ and _determination._ With stubbornness. With fire...

It was a look that, for some reason, reminded him of others that he had _never_ compared Potter to before now. Not really.

It reminded him of Lucius, of Voldermort, of Albus Dumbledore himself... and in the silence that grew into suffocating existence in the boys' wake Severus closed his tired eyes and wondered what it was about himself that attracted towards his person the kind of powerful men who could, so very _carelessly_ indeed, burn him to cinders...

TBC...


	6. Chapter 6

_**THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 6 **_

By the time Draco returned he'd discovered that the world had changed, indeed, while he'd been _asleep. _He'd lost count of the number of people who had waltzed into his room, under the guise of ever-more-ridiculous excuses, just to... _gush..._ At _him!. _It had all been rather... _off_ _putting._

He was bewildered by the inexplicable attention. By the almost universal _friendliness_ and outright hero-worship. He could not understand how it was possible for him to have gone from the role of Machiavellian _villain_ to some kind of... self-sacrificing _uber-spy_ in the space of a four-year, coma-induced absence.

So... Potter had not been joking when he'd implied that he'd been busily wagging his lying tongue, in order to create the most awful kind of chaos in his life...

He was exhausted within the first five minutes of brainless, repellently infatuated... _gushing._

Mildly irritated before the first half-hour had struck and absolutely _livid_ by the time the forth moronic nurse attempted to hand-feed him grapes...

The scene was so ghastly reminiscent of the horrifying _entertainment_ that his abhorrent father used to watch, with those horrid pals of his, on the all-important "_television_" that it incensed him to the point were he had no other option but to deliver an appalled reprimand. One cutting enough to drive the offensive "_perpetrator_" away in flood upon flood of tears.

His eyes closed and he swayed on the bed with sheer exhaustion. He felt wretched. His aching limbs plopped tiredly against the mattress and he sighed as his heavy eyelids started to shut down. His formidable control finally slipped and he felt himself succumbing to magically-induced drowsiness.

The combined power of the rather large quantity of Draught of the Living Dead that seemed to have been administered to him, teamed up with the more recent addition of the Pain-Away potion, and he found himself gritting his teeth furiously in enraged frustration. He couldn't allow himself to... _surrender..._ to the power of the potions. Not _here,_ where he felt this... _vulnerable._ Not inside a room that was clearly open to absolutely _everybody_ who cared to walk in on him. A room where he was _unprotected _in every sense of the word.

He'd been dumped in this strange reality that he could not understand and now found himself completely _unable_ to predict the actions of the people who surrounded him. He had no _trust_ in the fake kindness that was offered to him in such horrendously over-the-top way. He could not count on his magic to defend himself, was altogether too sick to have much faith in the strength of his own body and found himself, most _regrettably,_ unarmed. All in all he had no confidence in either the situation nor his own chances of escaping it unharmed, if things turned out for the worse, and therefore had absolutely no _intention_ of allowing himself to be subjugated with his own weapon of choice: the brewed kind.

He had just startled awake once again, body shaking with the need to just _close_ his eyes for one more second and allow himself to _indulge,_ when a man he finally recognized materialized by the door...

His pale face flushed with pleasure and his tired dark eyes warmed in exhausted welcome as the familiar blond hair caught the strong sunlight that was filtering into the room, through the half-opened curtains.

"Draco!..."

A brilliant smile lit up the boy's features and he started to cross the room, shaking his head from left to right and muttering half-jokingly:

"There's an absolute uproar out there, Godfather. You haven't been back among the conscious more than half a day and you are already making the staff break out in tears!"

Draco sat on the chair next to his bed and sighed wearily, gray colored eyes raked his face with such intent focus that it made Severus deeply uncomfortable.

"It is good to have you back, old man" The silver-tongued heir to the Malfoy fortune told him very softly and he felt his throat just... _close._.. with the intensity of the feelings that he was experiencing. Awkward things that he _knew_ _not_ how to express. Things like gratitude and joy. Things like simple, plain contentment. He blinked very slowly, allowing his whirling thoughts to overwhelm his awareness of his own clumsy emotions in order to bring himself under some form of control once again.

There was something that he wanted to do. No. There was something he _needed_ to do so badly that his instinctive need to just... go ahead and do it, was warring with the deep terror caused by the knowledge that... were the results of his little experiment to show him just another lie... he was not honestly certain if he could go on. Not with his mind truly intact. Not after having seen _this_ happy and strong version of Draco...

A careful and gentle hand came to rest over the blanket-covered lump that was his raised left knee and he startled. Charcoal-bruised black eyes turned to stare inquiringly straight into a smoke-colored sea of earnest understanding.

"Why don't you just... _do_ _it_, Godfather?" Draco's voice asked him softly, a wry smile curved those pale lips upwards when he motioned towards the door with a slightly frustrated sigh:

"Potter is being an absolute nuisance. I don't know how long it'll be before he barges right in and, frankly, I'm fed up of walking over eggshells around you. I'm certain that you are dying to know for sure and I can't say I blame you. I want to reassure you, so that you may trust me again completely, Severus. I want to see more than just hope in your eyes and the only way for that to happen is for you to stop thinking about it so hard and just... do it, all right?. I promise it'll be OK."

The speech caught him off guard, crushed half his doubts in and of itself because... whom, other than Draco himself, could have possibly sensed his... _reticence._.. and offered to address it quite so generously?.

His wary inhalation couldn't manage to dispel the unpleasant weight of the lump that was steadily constricting his raw throat. It was almost a full minute before he found strength enough, within his pitiful reserves of courage, to ask one simple question:

"Why was it that the first potion I ever taught you to brew was the Gnome Repellent Mist?"

Crafty laughter broke forth from his godchild's lips and the sound was so fiercely joyful that it managed to bring a brief touch of mirth to Severus' own eyes.

Draco seemed to have trouble calming down for a few seconds. Silver flashes of relieved amusement danced merrily around his pupils as he giggled to himself.

"I'd have paid the house-elves their weight in gold to have a memory of you trying to explain _that_ particular choice to my dear mother, Severus Snape!. As it is... I'll sadly have to content myself with imagining the scene, because we _both_ _know_ that the very first potion that you ever taught me to brew was the Blue-Serum Burn Salve, a very rare variant indeed of a fairly common potion. You _insisted_ that I learn that first because I am allergic to the standard solution and you wanted to have a fresh batch readily available in the lab if, as you put it: I was going to be _carelessly_ _stampeding_ around the dangerous evils of an open flame and boiling cauldrons"

Severus could have whooped with relief. He'd stilled completely as the answer spilled forth from Draco's lips and a wave of dizzying joy surged through his veins. So it was true... It was _true!._ Dear Merlin... It was true that _this_ was Draco. _His_ _Draco_... not some ghastly polyjuiced version of his boy brought forth to trick him...

"I... I hope you are not offended, Draco, but... I had to be sure"

Pale bangs fell across solemn gray eyes when the boy's face turned slightly. A thoughtful expression flitted across those unfamiliarly matured features as the young man's voice acquired the soothing quality of a father, patiently addressing the irrational fears of a very small child:

"I have now lived in peace for four long years, Godfather. You, on the other hand... have just woken at the very edge of war. No time has passed at all inside your mind. You remember _nothing_ but destruction. You can only see the world as you saw it then, in terms of either enemies or allies. Light and dark. Shame and treachery. Betrayal...

You can't really see any of us as we are now, at least not yet... I'm just glad to know that you believe me when I tell you that I'm exactly whom I claim to be. I'm happy enough with the reassurance that you'll trust me when I say that I am here to help you with everything that you might need"

All thought halted in his head for a brief second and he allowed himself to enjoy the fierce stab of profound pleasure that swelled within his heart upon hearing his godchild speaking thus.

To have irrefutable proof of the kind of beautiful, caring man that his precious boy had turned out to be was a blessing that he hadn't expected to live long enough to see. He was grateful to have been given the opportunity to do so. He was happy. He was proud enough to explode...

"I am so glad to be here, Draco..." He managed to utter, in a choked and fierce tone, through the huge rock that had settled inside his throat.

Soft gray eyes that were alive with hopeful joy settled over his own chalky features and he basked in the devotion that was being so very generously showered over him.

"Gladness is too mild of an emotion, Godfather. Gladness is for distant friends and pets. Gladness is for summertime and cheerful, merry parties. It can't find the right words to convey the wild _relief_ we are all feeling now that you are finally awake. There is a world out here that has waited far too long for you to join it and, now that you are among us, things will start to settle at last. You are going to live in peace, Godfather. Safe and secure among the people who love you, just like you deserve..."

-What he _deserved...-_ His heart froze and he shuddered with distress when those words hammered him with the true horror of his current situation. Draco didn't know what he had done... what Potter had demanded from him. His boy had no idea of what he'd so willingly sacrificed to keep him away from certain harm. He'd be... forever embroiled in a war he could not win with the son of his dead enemy. A _silent,_ _painful_ war that no one else would see...

He would _die,_ someday, a _slave._ A man possessed by another's zeal for revenge. A terribly empty shadow of the boy whom, so long ago, had only craved recognition and acceptance. How... _futile..._ those dreams had turned out to be!. How... _dangerous..._ They had led him down a path of self-destruction that had brought him, in the end, to this sickbed. He'd become a broken, worn-out replica of the teen he used to be, aged and more bitter than ever, yes. But still equally pathetic on the inside...

"Godfather?"

Draco called him so softly and yet... so intently. Silver eyes alive with both worry and suspicion.

He'd have given half his soul to smile reassuringly up into that paling face, just this once, but found himself unable to do so. He simply... lacked the strength...

"What's wrong, Godfather?. You must talk to me!"

Churning fire began to whirl in his empty stomach as the awful rage that was threatening to break his self-control started to boil within only to be brutally forced into a slow simmer, forever repressed into a powerless force. Unseen and voiceless. Useless...

"I am tired" He finally whispered. Avoiding eye contact, like the true coward that he was. His gritted jaw forced that excuse aloud even as his heart sank, so very heavily, into the darkest pit of Hell.

"I've found no respite from my _carers._ I had no chance to sleep and I am _exhausted..._"

Draco rose from his chair, dragging himself nearer. A slender right hip perched elegantly on the mattress as it's owner sighed with frustration and attempted, futilely, to force their gazes to clash.

"What are you not telling me, Severus? What did Harry say to you? What did he _do?_ We know he tried something! Father has been trying to get him to confess, through hook or crook, but he's just... keeping mum about it all..."

His every muscle turned to stone at the mention of Potter and he wondered why on Earth Draco felt the need to call the irksome creature by the name bestowed upon him by his detestable father.

"Potter has done _nothing_ out of the ordinary to me. You know how aurors are, Draco... Always so... _keen_ on self-righteousness. I find them all to be as distasteful as they are tiresome. We do not see eye to eye..."

For a long time there was silence. Thoughtful, worried silence. Then a hand rose very slowly to curl around his chin, forcing his head upwards. His ebony eyes had no other option but to lose themselves in the earnest silver depths of Draco's gaze.

"Harry Potter would rather _die_ than cause you harm. You know _that,_ don't you, Godfather?"

He shivered unconsciously. Suspended, for the longest time, between the need to just... shut his eyes closed, refusing to utter a single word further, and the almost visceral instinct to appease his godson's very obvious distress.

"I know that he has become some kind of... _advocate..._ of mine, in recent years" He finally settled upon uttering a fact, instead of answering. Praying to every god he could remember the name of for Draco not to pick the evasion up. A small smile, rueful and surprisingly fond, curved the delicate lips of the Malfoy heir.

"He's been an absolute terror, let me tell you. From the moment I first contacted Madam Pomfrey about you he drove us all _insane. _He started coming around all the time and demanding to see you... I thought Father was going to poison him at one point, just to have a moment's peace..."

A reminiscent chuckle broke that startling revelation and he prayed for the boy to just... shut up!. He did not want to think, or talk, or ponder about Harry-Bloody-Potter in any way at all. The fates decided to thwart him, as usual, by blatantly ignoring his desires and he found himself listening to his godson's solemn words with heart-pounding distress:

"We threw him out, you know?. Warded the manor _specifically_ against him and things seemed to settle, for a while. Then he went to the press and started to tell your story to whomever cared to listen and it was... well, it was a _revelation_ really. The turning point in those ghastly post-war months for all of us..."

He must have looked as shell-shocked as he was feeling. Hearing his own godchild describe the horror of Potter's cruel revenge, as it formed and took root, had hammered into his mind just how... utterly _twisted_ Lily's child had become.

Draco's curious gray eyes bored into his:

"Were you really that close, Severus? I still can't understand how I managed to _miss_ it!. I _remember_ how coldly you treated him at Hogwarts. I always thought you both detested each other with the kind of passion that doesn't tend to relent, to be perfectly honest..."

He blinked dazedly. Bewildered and uncertain of his footing. He did not know how he could answer such question. Had no idea at all, be it true or blatantly fabricated, of how to explain the _unexplainable_ without sounding... _unhinged._

"I thought so too, Draco, but... you know Potter. He does tend to behave in unexpected ways"

For some unfathomable reason those young shoulders drooped with abject disappointment at his answer.

"So you did not... _care..._ for him?. Really?. I can hardly believe that!"

Severus frowned in disconcerted bewilderment.

"I went to my death detesting the child!. I thought him too willful. He was disrespectful and ignorant. He'd run all over the place, like some kind of tragically victimized little urchin, without ever taking the time to understand that he was never really alone in his endeavors, that he was putting all of us at risk by never bothering to _listen!._ He never even _tried_ to thinkabout the consequences of his reckless actions_..._ Never mind being mature enough to make the _effort_ of attempting to understand the delicate nuances of a situation that was well above his head!"

Draco seemed to have turned into stone.

"You... You _hated_ him?. Really?... But that doesn't make any sense, Godfather! He was so _relieved_ to find out you were alive... He visited _All._ _The._ _Bloody._ _Time!._ He went as far as suing Rita Skeeter over that ghastly article she wrote about you. How could he have done so much, worried so much, worked that tirelessly to clean up your reputation if he had no hope at all of ever...?"

Severus wanted the conversation halted as soon as humanly possible. He was sickened by the implications he could hear. Horrified by the magnitude of the Gryffindor's deception and the fact that it had succeed so completely to convince someone who'd had that much access to them both during the whole of their acquaintance. Someone who knew Severus himself better than many...

"Draco, I have no wish to speak of Potter" He finally stated firmly and was dismayed when his damaged throat produced a terrible, croaked rendition of his resolute request for a change of subject.

His godson's pondering halted for a long, drawn-out second and he found himself swallowing his discomfiture under the sharp look being directed towards him.

"No!. No. This has to be clarified right now, Godfather." Draco's beautiful features had turned eager in the blink of an eye and a sudden flash of urgent, crystal-clear awareness brought new and terrifying determination to that insistent gray gaze:

"I don't think you are _understanding_ what I am trying to tell you, Severus! I believe that _something_ Harry's done or said to you managed to unnerve you greatly and I want to allay whatever _fears_ you are currently having with regards to our _Saviour..._"

He felt his every bone snap into the utter rigidity of a pre-duelling stance. There was no way on Earth that he was having _this_ conversation in his current frame of mind. No way that he was having this conversation with his current companion_,_ either. Not for all the magic of the Founders.

"I am not afraid of _Potter!_"

He snarled those six words with a savage, affronted growl that unleashed pure agony on his shattered vocal chords. Silver colored eyes darkened with concerned dismay as they registered his instinctive wince and a pair of careful, loving hands rose to cup his ashen cheekbones, framing his chalky face for a long second before Draco's reassurances resumed in earnest:

"There is nothing to fear at all. That's what I'm trying to tell you!. Whatever he's done or implied... it's just his stupidity talking, Godfather!. Potter has no _elegance_ at all. No _finesse._ He gets nervous and then... _tramples..._ all over his own words, like a... _a_ _Gryffindor!._ But I've seen how he looks at you. I have witnessed to his _actions_ all these years and I swear to you, Severus, that the man must l..."

"Malfoy, your father is searching for you"

They both jumped, as if burned, when the subject of their conversation suddenly spoke. How had Potter sneaked behind Draco, without either of them noticing it?. How long had he been there, so rudely eavesdropping on their private conversation?. Severus shuddered with horror at the idea. He hoped the bastard had heard enough to know exactly how much he still despised him, despite their loathsome pact. Black eyes clashed with that narrowed emerald stare to find themselves snared by the obvious pain displayed there and he frowned. He could not understand the man's odd moods, all those feelings so openly exposed, so blatantly displayed within the brilliant green orbs that Lily gave him for anyone to see... they had to be false, of course. Another one of those brilliant little _acts_ that he'd so convincingly used to con everyone into believing... what exactly?... that Harry Potter thought Severus Snape to be not so totally horrible?. Somehow he found that idea to be far worse than laughable. He could not understand how anybody in possession of good neurons could have fallen victim to so unbelievable a deception. But, after listening to Draco's words, it was obvious that they had... every single one of them believed Potter's lies. His godson and Luc, the entirety of the staff at St. Mungo's...

Suddenly remembering the crazy claims of the printed headlines that he'd thought he dreamed up, he began to consider the _possibility_ that he had been actually released from Azkaban that day... That he'd been _really_ trapped inside that painful copy of his own chambers. That his "unraveling" mind had never been unraveled to begin with and that he hadn't made up that strange encounter after all. He hadn't _dreamed_ almost suffocating to death in Potter's arms. Probably hadn't dreamed all those visitors who fought constantly around him while he laid trapped in virtual semi-conscience, either...

No. It must have been all mostly _real._ The first step of Potter's vengeance finally being put into careful action and he... he had _panicked_ and fought him. He had made himself _sick..._ He had placed himself all the faster straight into the little bastard's hands...

"Ah, Harry!. I see that the healers have managed to set you back to rights with no visible trouble. I hope Father fared just as well or Mother will be _unbearable_ to be around, come dinner time..."

Draco's greeting was so baffling that Severus' mind couldn't make either heads nor tails of it. His head turned sharply towards his godchild, missing completely the warning look exchanged by both youths, but catching the blond's rebellious reaction to it in the sudden paling of Draco's aristocratic visage.

A mulish look descended over the Malfoy features he knew so well and for a second there he believed himself to be staring at Luc as his friend had been all those years ago: proud, determined and so ultimately mistaken that it broke his heart anew. Associating with the then still charming Tom Riddle had been Luc's brilliant idea. In those early days Luc had firmly believed that a close collaboration with the emerging rebel would eventually bring them quite the fortune. They both had shared that ridiculous opinion. They'd been eighteen years of age and as brainless as old boots...

Luc had been so very wrong then, and so was Draco now... he didn't want to see his precious boy anywhere near the demented "Saviour of the World".

"Draco... do not fight with Potter on my behalf, child, it'll be a waste of time. I assure you that I am perfectly capable of dealing with every irritating auror that life decides to throw at me. Do not _worry yourself_ about any of this, _please_!"

Somewhere behind his godson's shoulder Potter gasped. Whether in outrage or in amusement to his words Severus had no interest at all in finding out. He had eyes only for Draco, his ears were equally attuned to hear nothing past the voice of the precious child he was attempting to protect properly this time. He could not focus on anything that did not involve convincing his blond angel to walk away from Potter. To stay away from him. To desist at once, completely, from antagonizing the Head Auror, no matter what the reason. Least of all on his own behalf...

Draco looked straight into his ashen face and Severus was certain that the boy could plainly see the anxiety within. He was human after all. Had always been so, regardless of what His-Holy-Saviour thought and he found it very hard to become blank as stone before his loved ones.

Draco narrowed his silver eyes. Long, pale hands curled into fists when he half-turned around to look towards their visitor. Awful silence fell between them all as his godson seemed to struggle with his own thoughts.

Potter remained still. Emerald eyes narrowed to slits while he confronted Draco's bewildered glare with truly impressive poise.

"I don't understand what's going on here, Harry... What...?"

"Everything it's going to be OK, Ferret" The bastard hurriedly interrupted his boy and the sheer _rudeness_ of that attitude, let alone the atrociously offensive name that he'd dared to call Draco in his presence made him grit his teeth in an agony of frustration. How he wished he could wring the jerk's thick neck, break it carelessly in two, set himself and his godchild free from this green-eyed tyrant!.

Draco turned around once more and his gray orbs settled upon Severus' temper-colored cheeks with obvious worry.

"I am not sure..."

"You have my word, Malfoy. My solemn vow."

They ignored him completely in order to exchange some sickeningly trusting little look of understanding and he felt like shaking the _Slytherinness_ right back into Draco's suddenly _Hufflepuffish_ mind. What was _wrong_ with his boy that he could so casually forget not only _six_ whole years of school-yard rivalry, but also the full damage brought on by a war fought on directly opposing sides?.

Draco nodded in agreement and it was all he could do not to scream at him, enraged. This was exactly what he wanted, wasn't it?. For his godson to believe their loathsome charade to the point of abandoning all suspicion. He didn't want these two to square off under any circumstances, if he could help it and yet...

He found that a sudden lump was closing off his throat. Oppressing his windpipe with mighty force as he simply sat there and stared dumbly at Draco. He realized that he felt _betrayed._ _Abandoned_. Utterly _cheated_. No matter how much he tried to _rationalize_ the thought, he could not shake off the awful feeling of... abject _disappointment._.. that was coursing through his veins at the idea of just how _easily_ it had been to convince his godchild...

"Godfather?"

The call reached him softly. That tender voice that he so loved had now, to his utter dismay, turned into the newest embodiment of hurtful betrayal, as he unconsciously compared this situation with others that had harmed him before. Draco Malfoy, beloved _son_ in everything but blood, became linked in his mind with the likes of Lily Evans and Albus Dumbledore... He'd _cherished_ those two throughout the years. Had placed more faith in them than on any other person alive and they both had let him down so _painfully_... They both had abandoned him in the cruelest of manners, leaving him alone to flail against his cursed fate during his darkest hours...

"Godfather?"

Draco's voice reached him anew and he shuddered instinctively. Trying to convince himself firmly of the fact that the blond-haired child he'd loved from the very first second that he'd held him wasn't at all like either of those two. Trying to tell himself over and over and over again that he hadn't placed his battered heart in the wrong hands once more...

"Severus?"

Potter's fake concern attempted to rouse him next and _that_ turned out to be the very last drop that he could possibly absorb without... _spilling_ _over._

"I am tired"

Was all he said and meant it. He did not look at either of them. He would not, could not allow himself the horrible _indignity_ of showing them just how... _hurt._.. he felt inside. He lowered himself onto the mattress properly and turned his back on them, mindful not to jostle his broken arm. He didn't see the looks the boys exchanged but could certainly imagine them without effort. He didn't think he'd manage to sleep, either. Not with the terrible state of anxiety he was in knowing that the two of them were still together in the same room, but he fell victim to the potions that were coursing through his veins almost at once...

TBC...


	7. Chapter 7

**THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 7**

He regained consciousness to the miserable experience of finding Harry bloody Potter at his bedside. Those myopic emerald eyes were the first thing that he saw when his lids finally parted and, unsettled right down to his very bones, it took him almost a full minute to mask what must have been a clear reflection of his dismayed discontent behind the familiar blank expression that had been his faithful companion for so long.

"_The_ _Boy_ _Who_ _Lived"_ frowned down at him with equal displeasure and the silence grew uncomfortably tense. Unpleasantly cold. Filled with so many things left unsaid that Severus fancied he could literally feel the poisonous emotions that they were both so very carefully _NOT_ talking about attempting to become living, breathing, murderous _entities_ within the oppressively silent walls that held them both trapped.

"You have slept for a long time, I was starting to worry"

The auror's tone was neutral when he finally uttered that particularly bewildering pair of sentences and Severus felt poised at the very edge of a perilous cliff. One that could very easily lead him straight towards the unthinkable consequences of failure, if he so much as offered the wrong answer to his new and unwanted master.

"I... I am sorry" He finally offered that insincere apology unwillingly. Resentfully. The words wavered between disheartened-croak and rebellious-squeak as they broke into this new world were he _must_ offer to this creature his... _respect._

Verdant pools that were alive with caution raked his pale face and Lily's child smiled tightly at him.

"You have nothing to be sorry for, Severus"

He blinked very slowly, trying to veil his confused sense of unease from that steady gaze. He wondered what was it that Potter wanted from him, exactly. Was it _terror_?. Was it plain, simple _submission?._ Was it some kind of twisted _mixture_ of those two emotions? He had no clue at all. No way to find out for sure or even take any kind of wild guess, based on what he'd known of the child before the war. He only knew that _this_ was meant to be his _punishment._ That the boy detested him on an almost visceral level and that, whatever response the jerk desired from him, he would _attempt_ to _deliver_ it. He would do _anything_ for Draco... But he was at a loss here. He had to find out how to...

"Do you need some water, Severus? Or some more Pain-Away? You missed the last dose, you know? You were still asleep and Malfoy went bloody bonkers when the nurse said she'd wake you..."

"Draco? " He gasped his godchild's name, startled by the horrible idea that the two had remained locked in the same room together after he'd dozed off. His head shot up from the pillows as he attempted to search the room, earning himself absolutely nothing but a shot of pure agony from the wound on his neck.

"Wrong Malfoy, sorry..." The words were spat so viciously that he flinched and his neck hurt all the harder when his head turned abruptly back towards the cold-eyed auror that now sat, as rigid as a post, in the bedside chair. Potter shot him a look that was as sharp and lethal as a poisoned dagger. It was a look that he'd have never believed the boy could even produce, had he not been _witnessing_ it with his very own eyes.

"_Lucius_ is here?" He croaked uncertainly, feeling completely at sea as to how to behave. How to speak to the monster before him. How to react to the words the boy was uttering, to the barely restrained violence that seemed to pulse outwards from every pore of that tautly held body.

Potter's shoulders shrugged in a dismissive little gesture.

"He's around somewhere. Gone to terrorize poor Jones, as far as I'm aware. Him and his bloody son, _both,_ haven't left the place since you re-gained consciousness. I'm sure they'll be here in a flash once

they find out that you are finally awake, so there's no need for you to _worry_ that they've abandoned you"

His whole body betrayed him by sagging in utter relief upon hearing those assertions, and he found himself on the receiving end of the most thunderous scowl once again.

"I'm doing what you _wanted,_ Potter!. I'm playing _nice_ to you while you accost me in my sick bed, like the very Specter of Death. Now it's time for _you_ to _do_ your own _part._ Leave Draco alone, for Merlin's sake!. I won't put up with you talking about my godchild in that disrespectful manner!" He growled defensively, absolutely livid with the obviously antagonistic behavior the man was showing every single time Draco was mentioned.

Those flawed copies of Lily's eyes blinked and the youth's golden features convulsed into absolute fury when the little jerk snapped back:

"Then _stop_ worrying so much about that bastard. It's driving me insane!'

Obsidian colored irises widened with shock. With absolutely appalled bewilderment. With utter incomprehension.

"How can I do such a thing?. He is _here,_ _YOU_ are _here._ There is nothing that I desire more _fervently_ than to have the _both_ of you as far _away_ from each other as humanly possible!" His attempt to scream at the miscreant was an unmitigated disaster and he flinched when the effort brought him new agony.

His brow broke into clammy sweat as his throat muscles attempted to cramp. The simple act of breathing become slowly more difficult as his traitorous body _dared_ to respond to the awful pain. In an effort to calm himself he closed his dark eyes and allowed his pounding head to sag pathetically against the too-warm pillows.

"Severus!"

He heard the voice. Registered the sudden, abject quality of the panic it projected, but was all together too busy attempting to relax himself to pay it any heed.

"Severus!"

The touch of blunt-tipped fingers as they carefully brushed a long lock of his dark hair away from his clammy forehead startled him so badly that he bolted upright. His wounded arm was jostled against a wide, muscular chest and a veritable tempest of dangerously angry blue sparks began to appear all over the protective surface of the healing ward that had been set over the limb. He gritted his teeth fiercely against the lacerating pain that suddenly set his whole left arm on fire.

"Oh, Gosh... I'm sorry!. I swear I didn't mean to do that, Professor!. I... Er... I'll... Do you want the Pain-Away now?. No?. Well... Mmm… Should I call the nurse for you?. What...?"

"Potter!" He managed to cut off that infernal babbling with a single, gritted gasp and welcome, soothing silence descended between them. His breathing became harsher as he struggled with his own reactions, in order to bring his wayward body under control. He knew that he was chocking and his throat started to strain as he began to hack loudly, fighting to inhale dismally decreasing amounts of seemingly thickened air.

Potter sat at the edge of his chair like a lump made out of stone. He seemed to have been petrified, hexed into utter stillness. Frozen to the spot... After a second or two the boy exhaled in a rush and shook that wild head of his fiercely, trembling fingers curled closed into a pair of frightening fists that settled over his thighs a mere blink before he spoke:

"Look at me, Severus!"

It was a command. A fiercely whispered, strangely compelling, curiously desperate _order _that had been issued in the most strained of voices and Severus could do nothing but obey it. His eyes opened to clash against green fire framed by thick, clear lenses and a veritable forest of softly curled black lashes.

Tanned features that were rigid with anxiety offered him a vision of stubbornly focused determination and a mouth that was neither a copy of James' nor of Lily's, but a curious mixture of the two, opened to shape the next few words coaxingly:

"_Breathe..._ Hold on for a second and try to breathe with me: In. Out... And again, Severus: In. Out... Slow down, for Merlin's sake!..."

His dark gaze zeroed in on those lips as he forced himself to follow their commands. He listened to the boy's words with all of his consciousness. Attempted to block off the excruciating discomfort that was emanating from his arm and concentrated on ignoring his embarrassment at having put himself in the awful situation of showing physical weakness before his enemy.

His breathing eased slowly, so very slowly... Time elapsed, like a relentlessly stretched elastic, into one of those awful eternities that so unfailing develops when you least desire for it to do so. There was nothing in the world but that green gaze and those slightly moistened, half-opened lips guiding the responses of his own constricted chest...

One difficult breath became another until a blink from those eyes offered him a welcome respite from the strange, urgent intensity with which they were holding his own captive... He felt trapped by those eyes and so lost that he panicked. He could not understand what was happening between them and there was a horrible, threatening _intimacy_ to the moment that he could not cope with.

He _attempted_ to close his eyes, paper thin lids lowered, like shields, against the boy. But Potter... Potter was merciless.

"Look at me!" He was ordered again to confront that bright green gaze with a gruffly growled command that fell across his reeling senses with the lethal efficiency of a deathly boxer's punch, one that was being directly aimed towards his frayed mind. Towards his dismayed recollection of a gaze just like this one... His sooty lashes fluttered unwillingly apart. Black depths cracked opened, became unwillingly exposed to unwelcome light. Made vulnerable by the most distressed fear that they had ever shown or held before another, revealing an entire world of alarmed unease as their owner stared with riveted attention straight into a veritable storm of emerald-green emotions.

"Severus..." His name was softly, gently, almost _reverently_ pronounced and he felt himself splinter like an aged, battered shell. He had never heard his name being used so tenderly...

"P... please..." He started to speak, only to falter when his senses finally registered the fact that he knew not what to say. He felt fragile and exposed. There was a drumming in his ears that was threatening to turn him utterly deaf. A dryness to his throat that was trying to force him into the most cowardly mutism...

The awful moment stretched and turned heavier as those merciless green eyes held his own captive within a disturbing swirl of warmth that he could not, _would_ _not_, surrender himself to. Abject panic finally drove him to unglue his lips... To find words from somewhere. To... bow... before the child and _beg_ like a _worthless_ _scoundrel_ for the permission that he now seemed to need to close his very own eyes...

"Please..." He repeated _pathetically,_ but knew not how to express himself further. He needed their strange _connection_ broken to end this... _madness._ He could not, would not _submit_ himself to the terrible danger inherent in the gentleness with which the boy had dared to address him. He would not surrender himself to the green-tinged fever that was burning, so brightly, inside those eyes. He needed to _retreat_ completely from the strange energy of this moment. He needed to e_scape_ this situation. _Forget_ it. _Erase_ it from his mind altogether...

"Please what, Severus?"

Potter's tone was still gentle, soothing. That gaze held him like a thin thread holds a kite and he found himself swallowing uneasily. His heart pounded like a stampeding mountain troll inside his ribcage as he became both unable and unwilling to _expose_ his weakness further. Then a hand rose towards him and when a calloused palm curled in a sickeningly tender caress around his right cheekbone he could not keep the desperation to retreat locked in any longer.

" Let me... I need... You must allow me to close my eyes, please..."

Young, pale lips smiled so sadly that they broke him and a thousand memories of Lily swirled within his mind, like jagged pieces of glass.

"_Why_?. Does looking at me hurt you, Severus?. I wonder what you see when your eyes settle on me... Not her, though, or you'd have _never_ managed to fool any of us..."

He blinked at those cryptic musings and the hand that held his cheek slowly fell away.

"I don't want to let you _hide_ from me, Professor. Not any more... And if you close those beautiful eyes of yours and turn away, only Merlin knows when you'll allow yourself to _see me_ again..."

There was such awfully thick knot of terror settling, so very heavily, inside his throat that he felt chocked. His whole body became rigid as he developed the most inauspicious certainty of impending doom that he'd experienced since hearing the very last words that the Dark Lord himself had ever hissed in his presence.

"I do not _understand..._"

A soft, rueful chuckle met his shamefully meek confession. He prayed with all his might for the bed to be engulfed by a wayward vanishing spell and was, as usual, most sorely disappointed.

"Of course you don't, Severus. I'd be surprised if you could..."

He didn't like that answer. He didn't like the little dejected sigh that accompanied it, either. Nor the frayed, heavy silence that followed.

He pulled his gaze off those defeated-looking features, blinking dazedly away as a myriad of tangled thoughts attempted to stampede throughout his exhausted mind. His right hand rose to cradle the still glittering length of his wounded arm gently and he lowered his ebony eyes, focusing them blindly over the efficiently wrapped extremity.

A soft sigh emerged from his companion and the man had the audacity to seat himself at the edge of his mattress.

"Tell me something, Professor. _Why_ did you suddenly decide to fight off the vow?. You had already agreed to my terms, if I recall correctly"

He felt sick at the reminder of his error, that one unwise decision that had cost him already more than any other: His own magic. His whole magic, so pointlessly relinquished into the hands of another...

He could not control the shiver that raked through him, exposing his utter devastation to the derision of those all-seeing eyes.

"Do not look at me like that, Potter. I have no need for pity, least of all _yours_!"

The auror's body shifted sharply upon the mattress and a hand shot out towards him, merciless fingers curled firmly around his chin and tugged upwards. There was nothing he could do but comply to that forceful -if silent- demand and his face rose once more. Defiant glittering obsidian confronted green-tinged stubbornness as the young lion's growl reached his ears:

"You'll _answer_ my every question, Severus!. Don't you recall the wording of our deal?"

How he wished in that second that, like the basilisk, he could too fall his enemies with the vitriol in his eyes!... But that desire, like every other blessing that he'd ever craved for, was not to be granted to him.

His mouth tightened into a thin, displeased line and he pulled his face away with a contemptuous tug. His ebony gaze shot daggers of pure hatred into the smirking visage of the cocky little bastard.

"I was _forced_ into agreeing to a bond based on _revenge_, Potter. Even your minuscule mind should have been able to cotton onto the fact that the magic that followed the vow was... most emphatically _not_ _threatening_!. There was something off with the spell. It was trying to tie us, both, with... with..." He faltered suddenly. Sharp cheekbones colored uncomfortably as he wrestled with his vast vocabulary in order to find a word, any word, that could fittingly describe the intent that he'd felt in that magic, other than the obvious... He could not bring himself to sustain that bright gaze as the boy's awareness became clearer. A gasp broke free from those lips, followed by a quiet, awed chuckle.

"You could _feel_ the intention of the magic?. Wow... That's just... I don't know. It's _Awesome!_"

He just... _reeled_. He seemed to be _unable_ to do anything other than sit rigidly on the bed, like some kind of freakishly peeved statue, as the ridiculous creature _failed_ to react to the very _horrific_ point of the _confession_ he'd just made.

"Are you deaf, Potter?. I said that the spell was behaving as though... as though it _found_ the existence of some kind of... _regard._.. between us! "

The irritating whelp shook that headache-inducing nest of madness that he called hair from side to side.

"Amazing... I didn't even _know_ that it was possible to _sense_ the intention of a spell"

His jaw locked with the familiar angry frustration that had always followed his every interaction with Potter in the past.

"Would you _listen_ to yourself, boy?. Intention is the most important aspect of all magic!. It's the one thing that defines it: Dark and Light. Deathly or Healing... There is not a curse or hex ever written that can't be pulled apart and analyzed based on the primary emotion that drove it's caster..."

Green eyes turned sombre as they registered his utmost agitation. Golden features softened with something very much like pity, when their owner studied him seriously in the small silence that followed.

"So... The _wording_ of the vow didn't matter at all. Did it, Severus?. The magic _sensed_ the _intentions _that were behind them and adjusted itself to them instead, regardless of our words..."

He froze. Whole mind descending into the realms of utter incredulity as the implications of that carelessly flung comment opened before him possibilities that he'd never even considered.

"What _intentions_, Potter?"

The boy looked straight at him.

"_My_ _intentions_, of course. I was the one with the wand. I was the one who demanded the Oath. I was the one who spelled out the conditions of it and you simply... limited yourself to repeat my demands aloud"

A pale blue-tinted vein began to throb visibly on his temple. His jaw locked, his teeth gritted and his hands closed into fists:

"_What._ _Intentions._ _Potter_?" He repeated the same question in a frosty and deadly tone. A black, unfathomable anger began to rise within his chest like molten lava.

"You _wanted_ to be _punished_, Severus, but that was only _you,_ I... I wanted something else entirely. Something that you were very obviously never going to _volunteer_ of your own free will, so I... I had to trick you into giving me my chance. I. HAD. TO!.

You must have _needed_ someone to spout all of that awful revenge-stuff at you. You must have _desired_ to hear it with all of your heart or the potion would have _never_ taken me down that road..."

He felt cold all of a sudden. Frozen down to the very last cell contained within his body as he recalled that last, ghastly conversation that they had shared. He remembered the boy's witless babbling and

the fight that had ensued between them, culminating with the awful implication that he might had been suicidal during the last hours of the Final Battle:

" You. Wanted. To. Die. Just. Like. She. Did!" The auror had screamed that at him and his own incensed response had been equally brutal:

" I despise you, Harry Potter!"

He remembered averting his eyes for a moment and then... then the tinkling of some liquid being carefully poured into a glass had forced him to turn his head back around, in order to stare at the menace. He remembered the fleeting vision of a liquid, barely a mouthful. A beautiful _yellow_ liquid with the same shade of _sunlight._..

"Felix Felicis!..." The name of that repellent potion broke from his lips with all the force of a murder accusation. With the disconcerted, horrified awareness that he had been _tricked._.. into _SLAVERY_, by this..._BEAST._.. in auror's uniform!.

Potter had the decency to flinch. He was deadly pale and shaking. His throat convulsed as he swallowed visibly and his voice broke away from those rose-tainted lips like a whispered plea:

"Severus, I didn't _know_ that it would take me down that path!. I had used it before, you see?... and it wasn't quite that _vicious_. I just wanted to... No. I _needed_ a chance to tell you that I..."

"You... You took _FELIX_ _FELICIS_!... YOU _BASTARD_!. You wanted to make _sure_ that I'd fall for your sick plans... I had not a _chance_ against you that day, Potter. Not. A. Bloody. Chance!"

His rage knew no bounds. No limits. There was _nothing_ to his self but hatred at that moment. He felt utter abhorrence. Dislike. He wanted to _kill_ the bastard with such intensity that his mind shorted. Every muscle he possessed clenched with the need to harm the boy. He desired to break him!. Bring him to the same horrifyingly _humiliating_ position that he himself had been brought to...

His whole body lurched forwards as he used the only recourse available to his weakened, magic-less body and allowed the very inertia of the sudden movement to bring his whole head into a brutal, bone-crunching collision-course with the jerk's face.

Blood immediately began to pour over his right ear and cheek as Potter's nose broke with a most satisfying crunch.

"SEVERUS!" The shocked hiss, muffled as it was behind the pained awareness of unforeseen retribution, was certainly worth the sickening jolt of reactive magic that sprung all over his broken arm when Potter, in his startled reaction to the attack, held him instinctively away by the shoulders.

His body shuddered in the throes of the most odious agony for the few frozen seconds that it took the auror to realize that he had triggered the ward that protected his broken arm. Potter released him jerkily then, as carelessly as he'd seized him in the first place, and now bereft of both, his own meager strength and the unwilling support of the profusely bleeding gryffindor, Severus' body fell forwards -against the mattress- with a soft, but firm thud.

The shock of it sent new waves of dizzying pain throughout his neck, his arm and, surprisingly, the upper half of his skull. He smiled, nevertheless, when his dark eyes caught a fleeting hint of crimson among the crisp whiteness of the bedding.

"I've hurt him!. I've hurt him!" He crowed to himself with vindictive pleasure and the last though to cross his mind before he finally passed out from pain and exhaustion was that he was not yet so _defeated_ that he'd allow another Potter bastard to play hard ball with him and escape unscathed...

TBC...


	8. Chapter 8

**THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 8**

He was totally fed up of losing consciousness every two seconds, like some kind of utterly _Hufflepuffian_ heroine in a dreadfully _Lockhart-ish_ melodrama.

-Belt up man!- He thought to himself as he came slowly back to the cold reality of full awareness: -It was only a little head-butt and you unraveled like a bloody lightweight!. Bella would have laughed you right out of the Lord's presence in a second with that kind of weakling performance...-

"Come on, Severus... I _know_ that you are awake. Stop stalling and open those eyes of yours so that I may congratulate you on your _excellent_ _battle_ skills, my friend" That drawled interruption to his aggravated thoughts brought him up short.

He'd recognized the aristocratic voice at once, of course. Felt immediately at ease knowing that it's owner was so close, but had absolutely _no_ _intention_ of revealing himself conscious, in any shape or form, before he could ascertain the exact level of strength that he had re-gained and the position of that utter _bastard,_ Potter!.

"Oh, For Merlin's sake!. He is _not_ _here_ right now, Severus. They've got him in a private room downstairs, suffering through a complete course of Skele-Gro because the damage that _you_ caused to his nose, magic-less and half-dead as you are, my friend, could not be reversed with a simple Episkey like the one that was used to treat my own obviously totally _pathetic_ effort, not five hours ago!"

His eyes shot open in total incredulity:

"You _punched_ Potter?" His astonished blinking was enough to bring a sly smile to Luc's irritatingly attractive features.

"I agree that I would have caused far more damage with a wand, obviously. But you know them, _Gryffindors,_ for all that supposedly undaunted _courage_ that they can't stop _boasting_ about they turn surprisingly Slytherin when they know they are in trouble. He accioed our wands the second Draco and I walked into the emergency room. Lacked the balls to tell us exactly what was wrong with you until he'd already disarmed us. "

There was a brief second of silence. Luc's cold gaze began to freeze, like the deathly waters of the Arctic ocean, when his eyes settled over the ward that was enveloping Severus' arm:

"Probably saved me from a rather long stint in Azkaban, that. I don't know what I would have done, had I still been in command of my magic, when he told us that he'd drained you"

Luc's patrician features twisted into a mask that reminded him suddenly of old Abraxas and that mad bastard had been unnervingly creepy, even in his good days...

Shivering uneasily in reaction to those memories he pondered Luc's frosty tone which, when coupled with the revealing clench of the blond's elegant fingers around that overly decorated wand-holder that he treasured so much, told Severus that there had been trouble indeed. Trouble with a capital T. Still... It was _amazing._ He couldn't actually _imagine_ his prissily haughty friend willingly descending into the "distasteful disgrace of muggle fist-fights " for any reason whatsoever, let alone in his behalf...

"You... _You_ _punched_ Potter?" He repeated the question stupidly and was brought right out of his astonished daze when the pale gray eyes narrowed into an aggravated sort of defensiveness that broke into irritated life with Luc's next comment:

"Yes, I did punch the mighty Savior himself. Not as effectively as your own flawless attempt, of course. But allow me to point out in my defense that I did what I could, considering... Muggle violence is just... Ewww!... I simply lack the words!"

Severus sighed. Half a minute of Luc's usual shenanigans and he was already tempted to jump right off a cliff.

"So Potter's out of the way... Good. Now maybe _you_ can tell me what the Hell is going on, but first... I want to ask you a very important question, Lucius"

His friend inclined eagerly forward in the chair. Luminous silver eyes alert and solemn.

"Yes. Draco said that you'd need to. That you are still in war-mode. It's quite _distressing _to see, after all this time of peace. But then you've been... _impervious..._ to it all for four long years"

Their eyes locked and he swallowed with difficulty. Unwillingly trapped, as he was, on the receiving end of a well of deep pity. There were many things that only Luc had ever dared to give him without having any fear of reprisals and genuine, sorrow-filled commiseration for his miserable luck in life had always been one of them.

The silence between them turned expectant. The very polished image of his aristocratic friend remained perched almost at the very edge of his seat, poised for imminent action.

The seconds stretched too long as his own mind grappled with the idea that, if this man proved himself to be the real Lucius... If there were neither _apparent_ nor _imagined_ plots against him being put into action by some still unidentified enemies, and Potter. Let's not forget _Potter..,_ then he'd truly find himself at sea in this strange new world. Reality would _cease_ to make any _sense_ at all. His life as it had been, as he _remembered_ it, would now become an obsolete set of memories, already left behind by those who surrounded him...

His throat closed with unease and he could not have found his voice for all the gold in Gringots.

"Oh, For Merlin's sake, Severus!. Stop that melodrama right this second, will you?..."

Luc's impatience came, as usual, to his rescue. Or to hinder his still floundering efforts even more. His friend tended to be a rather constant source of either mayor trouble or ringing success with wearying indiscrimination between both.

Long blond hair swung in a blinding arch of silver colored locks when their increasingly eager owner dragged himself, chair and all, even closer to the bed and that haughty and aristocratic voice that he'd known most of his life broke the tense silence without so much as a by-your-leave:

"How about _this...?_ My pride and joy was relating his encounter with you this afternoon when I found myself very confused, indeed, by his reported answer to the question that you asked of him.

_YOU,_ cunning old bastard that you are, told ME that the first potion you were going to teach him was the Fever-Reducer Philtre! "

-Oh, no!...- He recognized the dangerous quality of Luc's tone. Could tell that, any second now, he'd be accused of some incredibly ridiculous fault of his in the most irrational manner possible. He was frankly too exhausted to put up with any of it.

"Lucius..."

"I _asked_ him to show me the results of his labors at the time and his confused look led me to believe that he had, somehow, flunked the potion!. Because of your irrationally paranoid nature, Severus Snape, I have spent more than a decade _wrestling_ with the _awful_ idea that my precious son _failed_ most abjectly in his very first attempt to shine within the field of his choice!"

-Yep, his friend was in full drama-king mode...- Taking a deep breath he attempted again to still that enraged flow:

"Lucius..." And it proved to be an utter waste of energy, of course.

"I have tip-toed over the issue, like a chicken avoiding pebbles, ever since!. I have been _teased_, TEASED, mercilessly with Draco's supposed failure because I was so _distraught_ at the time that I let the information _slip_ within hearing of the most dreadfully jealous kind of hangers-on..."

His eye started to twitch with the very first hints of the headache that was approaching his poor, struggling mind at top speed. He _attempted, _once again, to halt the onslaught of Luc's depressingly long diatribe.

"Lucius... I'm sorry but I..."

"_You_ are sorry? You. Are. _Sorry_?. You should be more than sorry, my friend. You should be absolutely _devastated_, at the very least!"

His teeth gritted and he took a single deep breath.

"You are _behaving_ like a bloody _bimbo_ again, Malfoy!" He attempted to use "The Growl" and only managed a shameful screech, but it didn't matter. He'd achieved what he wanted and now sombre, focused Lucius was back with a vengeance.

"_THAT_ was totally _uncalled_ _for_!"

Swallowing a bout of hiccuping, hysterical laughter he pointed out crossly:

"You were driving me insane!"

Luc's perfectly rosy lips compressed in indignation.

"My apologies, then. I seem to have forgotten just how unpleasantly _grumpy_ you are when you wake up"

A peeved pause seemed to bring some sense of proportion to that twisted, aristocratic mind and Luc's very next words were offered with far less venom:

"I should have waited before berating you. You can't be feeling well enough to argue, in any case. You have been... _greatly_ _harmed_, after all"

A lump the size of Hogwarts settled right over his throat and crushed it mercilessly. Black eyes blinked very slowly as he looked away. Silence was all that he could offer in answer to the uncomfortable acknowledgement that now... now he was _nobody._ A _magic-less_ freak. A _squib._ A useless walking wounded...

The shield over his broken arm glimmered it's warning blue sparks when he banged the useless limb against the mattress in his clumsy attempt to raise himself into a seated position.

Haughty gray eyes looked on, from under narrowed pale lids, and their owner's tone turned gruff with unamused exasperation when he finally pointed out:

"You could have asked _me_ to give you a hand, you know?. Just because you could achieve the same result if you struggle all by yourself, like some weird sort of one-armed, half-broken mound of sheer pride and crazy stubbornness doesn't mean that you have to, Severus. No one is going to think any less of you for allowing yourself to be helped every now and then."

He sagged against the mountain of pillows that covered the headboard. A thin layer of cold sweat was bathing his temple in response to the strain he'd just put his weakened muscles trough, but he ignored all of that for the moment. One ragged breath led to another and the silence grew into something that was not so... friendly and frustrated any longer. It wasn't merely uncomfortable, either. It had changed into that utterly blank _nothingness_ of sudden and unwelcome realization.

"You are still _uncertain, a_re you not?. You haven't called me Luc since you woke up..."

His jaw locked in obstinate refusal to feel guilty for his caution. Anyone could have polyjuiced themselves into Malfoy and entered this drattedly exposed room!.

"_You_ chose the test, I can not trust it. There could be a million explanations as to how you knew the name of the first potion that I said I was going to teach to Draco."

There was a heartbeat of silence. It was cold and sad and filled to the brim with about a million memories of trickery.

"You _think_ that I've come prepared... You believe that I'm an _enemy._ Your enemy."

Ebony colored eyes clashed with gray.

"I think that you are a very _convincing_ Lucius Malfoy"

A chuckle fell between them then. It was rueful and caustic at the same time, a signature sound that was so Luc's that it brought goose-bumps to the skin on the back of his neck.

"Go ahead then, Severus. Choose your test."

The soft, crimson-tinged light of sunset that was coming in from the half-opened windows turned that platinum hair to silver thread. His eyes lost themselves in the very exquisite beauty of it. Unable, as he was, to sustain Luc's hard gray stare for a second longer...

"I remember something you said to me not long after you met Narcissa Black for the first time.

We coincided with her at Goyle's summer state. We've been invited with a bunch of other third years to Geoff's birthday party, I believe.

Narcissa was there. She'd been forced to accompany Bella for propriety's sake, because of the sheer amount of boys who'd been invited to that party...and she... she was doing something awful. She was running around barefooted and throwing the apples from the orchard at the old man's prized swans. Do you remember what you told me then?"

Luc's haughty expression turned soft with recollection. Silver shards of emotion flashed, like slowly melting diamonds, within his distinctive smoke-colored irises.

"It wasn't Goyle's party, Severus. It was Crabbe's. And she'd been throwing mud-shots at the birds, not apples. But she was barefooted. And laughing. I'd never seen something so carefree before...

I told you then that I'd marry _her_ or no one. That a woman who could besmirch in such a manner the aching beauty of a white swan would not be enthralled so easily by my own.

I told you that I wanted to be... _cherished..._ for something _other_ than my outward appearance. I said that when the love a man inspires turns out to be only skin deep nothing on Earth can save it from destruction... I _told_ _you_ that I refused to endure my father's fate and I have never, before or after, repeated that same sentiment aloud. Not even to her. To disparage my parent's marriage in such a manner was utterly disrespectful of me at the very least..."

"I _know_ that, Luc..."

He offered the soothing acknowledgement in a quiet, choked whisper. There was something like relief clamping his lungs. There was something joyful and utterly terrifying at the same time in the knowledge that his friend, his crazy friend, was truly here. In the flesh. _Alive_ and _well,_ after their harsh ride through those last, bitterly dark years... To be finally able to accept that they both had made it to the other side of Voldermort's sick war was just... plainly _liberating._

"Luc..."

He used the name in wonder. In a softly reverent and astonished half-breath and received a glowing smile in return that left him dazzled.

"Yes, Severus, we've made it, my friend. He is _dead_ and we are _alive!..._ We are both well. We are _safe _and we are also worry free now that you've, finally, decided to wake up"

They both laughed, locked together in a strange moment of utterly childish relief. Of uncomplicated happiness. Of silent, heartfelt gladness...

"How is Cissy?" He rasped the question suddenly into the silence. A shiver of cold fear running down his spine in the blink of an eye at the realization that he... he'd seen Draco and Luc, but not her. Not _her!..._

"She's gone home in a huff. Didn't much like it when she found Potter and I "brawling" down the corridor. One disgusted look at my swollen eye was all it took her to decide there and then that she'd had enough _"masculine_ _nonsense"_ for the day. Didn't even have the decency to congratulate me in the fine achievement of breaking the idiot's nose with absolutely _no_ _magic!_"

Severus was too relieved to chuckle at the obvious attempt at humor and the moment turned serious in the blink of an eye. No one else had ever managed to read his changing moods as accurately as Luc.

Silence fell once again between them, but it had a peaceful quality this time. They both saw it now for what it was: a moment of respite that allowed Severus some more time to ponder on the thoughts that were crossing his mind. His wound throbbed almost constantly on his neck. Not as painfully as it had done while he'd been still trapped in Azkaban, but still troubling enough to remind him that he... he'd believed himself _dead._ Or, at least _dying,_ during the final hours of the battle.

"What happened, Luc?"

The neutral expression in his friend's intent features vanished at once. Pale gray eyes searched his own face with measuring intensity.

"What do you _know_ -or _think_ you know-, exactly, Severus?"

He pondered the question for a moment. Whirling memories of half-remembered moments flashed through his mind's eye...

He thought back to Nagini: Huge, wet fangs, that were dripping with dark venom sinking into his neck... He remembered the awful pain that followed as a deeply corrosive, unendurable and quite weakening wave of cursed fire that spread at top speed throughout his veins. He had memories of blood. Of Potter. Of his own increasing desperation to deliver the awful message that would kill the both of them: The Dark Lord and Lily's child. He'd believed it was impossible to save one without allowing the other to... _remain. _He'd lost all hope of ever finding an alternative to Albus' solution and had unburdened his wretched knowledge on that boy, knowing that it would ultimately lead him to destruction.

-For the greater good. It's all for the greater good, Severus...- He remembered the soul-destroying echo of Albus' merciless words dominating his very last thoughts with their poisonous self-justification and the feeling of remorse that shattered him. He remembered dying in a wave of hate-filled self-condemnation and deep shame. Lily... Oh, Lily... How he'd failed her and her son... once again!.

He recalled waking up afraid. Alone. The dark walls of Azkaban closing in on him... He remembered weeks of numbness. And terror. And fear. He remembered Peterssen...

Then the world had just exploded into chaos and there had been nothing but... _THIS!._

"I don't really know how to answer that question, Luc. I... I don't know what to think!" Deep frustration overcame him and he sighed, flopping back against the pillows like an old and ruffled cat "It all comes back to the boy, doesn't it?. That's the only thing that's clear enough to me."

Luc smiled in response, one long leg coming to rest with elegant flair over the other leg's knee.

"Should I assume that "the boy" refers to our esteemed _Saviour,_ Severus?"

A barely-there inclination of his head was good enough to encourage Luc into further speech:

"Your unfailing ability to reduce any given set of circumstances to their most essential truth remains, as always, a constant source of wonder to me, my friend. I'd have to agree with you there, though: _POTTER_ happened. He won the war, you see... and, when he did not _die,_ his fame shot into the stratosphere almost overnight"

"As if that brat needed any more attention..." He muttered under his breath with bitter resentment, not really caring for these news but perfectly unsurprised by them.

Luc's head turned very slightly to the left. Thoughtful eyes alert with mirth and questions, both.

"His favor saved my family from a truly ugly fate, Severus. Cissy did him a good turn at the last second. Told the Lord that the boy was dead and that... stupid... _Half-Blood_ went ahead and believed a fierce woman, whose family he'd _threatened_ for so long... Turns out that Potter was _alive_ and planning his enemy's very welcome demise. This time for good."

Severus' eyes clashed with Luc's own. Ebony depths filling with understanding at long last.

"So the boy protected Cissy in return, didn't he?" The question abandoned his lips more like an obvious statement than a query that required confirmation. He could see Albus' pet hero behaving thus. Yes, Potter... Potter would have been _generous_ to those who'd helped him.

Luc's blond head shook in confirmation and he saw his friend's lips curve in a small rueful smile.

"He helped Draco, too. Saved my son from a truly ghastly fate during the battle."

The uncharacteristic shudder that raked Lucius' frame brought back the memory of a claim the repellent auror had made:

"Did Draco really almost fall victim to Fiendfyre?"

Horrified dark eyes glazed with distress on the receiving end of Luc's jerk of assent. He could not imagine a death more excruciating... and to know, without a doubt, that such a fate could have befallen his godchild...

"I, myself, had taken steps to protect my own interests in case of discovery. I am sure you remember what they were. You were there when the brilliance of my plot suddenly struck me, after all. And it worked like _magic_, by the way. Despite _your_ irritating certainty that it _wouldn't_!"

His thoughts whirled thankfully away from nightmare-inducing images of his godson being swallowed alive by cursed fire and he turned an appraising look in Luc's direction.

"I have to assume then that Macnair never made it... "

A slight shrug of wide shoulders emphasized a response as unapologetic as it was harsh.

"Colin Creevy's wand, I believe"

His mind shorted with sheer shock at that detail and he turned disbelieving eyes to his companion:

"Creevy's?. That is _impossible_!. Colin Creevy was as useless as he was strange. He wouldn't, _ever,_ have managed to take out Mcnair..."

Luc's expression didn't waver in the slightest, but his tone turned frosty and very careful. _Pointed._

"I have _nothing_ to add, _officially_, to that uncannily accurate assessment of yours"

Severus heard, loud and clear, the words his friend kept back. Macnair had been a brutal sadist of the worst kind and, although he'd known the man since they'd both been eleven, he found himself unable to feel more than vague neutrality about his death. He was _gone_ and Luc was out of prison... all in all the better man had triumphed in this case.

"And the elf?"

Incredulous laughter broke out across the room.

"The _elf_?. Severus, I can't believe you've just asked me that ridiculous question. The elf is at home, of course!. Or are you implying that there was even the most remote _possibility_ that any of the ministry paper-pushers, unimaginative as they all are, would have ever suspected _ME_ of bullying one of my own house elves into forcing Walden Macnair to "_Imperius_" me _yearly,_ no less, into the Dark Lord's service?"

Dark eyes flickered slowly as his head shook in accord.

"I agree that your thought process on the matter was singularly _twisted_, Luc. That's _precisely_ why I never thought it'll _work..._"

The silence that followed became the small quietude in which he was forced to endure the utterly satisfied expression that was reflected all over the devastatingly handsome face of his oldest friend.

"So... no one ever found out. Did they even _bother_ to check Mcnair's wand?"

Luc's snort was both derisive and triumphant, unholy mirth brought silver shards of pleasure to his cold and pale gray gaze.

"Of course they checked the wand!. They were so _eager_ to call me a liar that it was almost... _too_ _easy..._ to _prove_ them wrong. Hermione Granger, Merlin bless her pious heart, insisted rather forcibly on having all of us, _Death_ _Eaters, _judged in specially open sessions of the Wizengamot. All kinds of new and _fairer_ laws were hastily passed in order to make their _justice_ more _ethical._ I couldn't have planned it better if I had written those ridiculously hufflepuffian laws myself!"

Black eyes glowed in shocked, wonder-filled understating when a picture, a truly ironic picture of exactly what had happened began to finally form within his mind.

"Ethical laws, like the muggles. Granger... Of course!"

Luc's smile was wide and cold blooded, the expression in his face reminiscent of a shark's after a successful hunt.

"It all worked like a dream in my favor. I even received a public apology at the end of it all since I had been initially imprisoned on Potter's word alone, accused of crimes that I committed only because I was _forced_ to obey My Lord's orders under the _Imperius._"

He was stunned at the idiocy of the ministry.

"I can't believe it!. A second war comes along with you on the losing side, _again,_ and they fall for the same trick line, hook and sinker!..."

An elegant blond eyebrow waggled at him.

"It was a rather good _trick,_ Severus. A true _masterpiece_ of great cunning and ingenuity..."

He had to laugh at that. Only a Malfoy would have bet his whole future on that kind of wild card and come out triumphant.

"So you walked out with an apology and I ended up in Azkaban. That's just..." His words came to an abrupt halt. Parched throat raw with the injustice of it all. Bitterness engulfed him so suddenly that he was not at all prepared to conceal it and it shone, like lethal poison, through every whispered syllable when he added helplessly "I don't even _know_ what that is..."

Silence burned the air between them with the resentment that was pounding through his every vein, pouring off his rigid form in wave upon wave of disgust.

"No, Severus. That was _not_ how it happened at all!. You are not even _close,_ old friend"

Luc's tone had softened with concern. That beautiful pale face was taut with barely concealed worry and sheer regret shone as clear as pure water in those smoke colored eyes.

"Potter went _crazy_ over you, but you were... _asleep... f_or such a long time... Your court case simply _didn't_ _happen. _Nobody wanted to be the first to say it needed to go through and you... you were not even conscious. It was easier to continue with everyday life and let it all go. By the point when you started to show signs of waking they tried to _rush_ the hearing, but there wasn't enough time..."

He understood the words but their truth burned him in an inferno of bottomless resentment:

"They _allowed_ _me_ to rot in Azkaban!" He growled at the top of his voice, enraged with them all for their betrayal, and Luc flinched in his seat.

"No. _NO!._ They only took you _there _when it became clear that you'd be _waking_ before the court case could go through. Granger's new laws worked against you, Severus!... and Potter, with his high profile position, could do nothing, _Nothing!,_ but follow proper protocol or risk the kind of full-blown scandal that would have torn the auror department apart..."

He looked straight into his friend's gray eyes but could not see them. His heart thundered and his mind reeled with outrage:

"Do not _lie_ to me, Luc!. I woke up in that Hell-hole and the infirmary staff called me a _murderer._ They took _pleasure_ in _breaking_ _me._ Theirs was not the behavior of people who believe themselves to be in the presence of an _innocent_ man!"

Luc's pale hair shone like sunlight and his rose-tinted lips tightened furiously in a face that had gone savage with affronted dislike.

"Peterssen!..."

Severus felt like screaming. Like throwing himself right off the bed in order to grab Luc's rigid shoulders and _shake_ him right off that ridiculously outraged stillness.

"Yes, _Peterssen,_ and his two bloody henchmen!. The very same men who _tortured_ me while I laid, sick as a dog, on that dammed infirmary!. They treated me like only a man who's been found guilty would have been treated. I was in _Azkaban,_ for Merlin's sake!. I felt _condemned._ I was put through all the paces as soon as I came to: the derision and the insults and the spitting in the face... Those were the _mildest_ things that they _blessed_ me with, so don't you _DARE_ try to _convince_ me that I dreamed it all up, Lucius Malfoy!"

Luc was pale. He looked sick and furious, shocked right into paralysis. Incensed:

"I. Am. Telling. You. The. Truth!. I'll even _swear_ _it_, Severus. On Narcissa's very _life!._ On _Draco's!:_

You were at the Manor for the first year and a half. Draco was so certain that he could cure you...

Potter became an absolute thorn on our side for all of that time. I threw him out and he started to follow me whenever I so much as set one foot on Diagon Alley. Cissy was hounded by her sister non-stop. And Draco... Draco came to _blows_ with him. With Weasley. With half the blasted g_ryffindors_ of Hogwarts, at least twice a week, when he had to go back to the school for his last year..."

"I don't _believe_ you"

"IT. IS. THE. _TRUTH!"_

A pause ensued then. An oppressive, resentful one. Their eyes clashed and both glared right into each other's faces. Then Luc swallowed visibly and a sigh rent the air. The words that followed were quieter. But also firmer. Each sentence filled with what his friend obviously thought to be nothing but the whole, undeniable, truth:

"Things came to a head over the Christmas break, during Draco's second attempt at seventh year.

Potter showed up at the house with Dumbledore's portrait under one arm. He _demanded_ to see you and I set the hounds on him. That was when Mcgonagal went _berserk._ Whether it was Potter himself who convinced her to do it, or that crazy, painted ex-mentor of yours, I've never known. But she went ahead and _sued_ us, _US,_ on your behalf. She accused us of having literally _kidnapped_ you off the battlefield and the Wizengamot itself became embroiled in a legal battle that, I, ultimately lost.

You were transferred to Hogwarts two and a half years ago and remained there ever since. That was until your very _temporary_ relocation to Azkaban became a _necessity_"

Severus was stunned into silence. Ebony pools of astounded incredulity turned their mystified depths towards Luc's flushed face.

"Minnie _sued_ you?. _YOU?._ And the Wizengamot... What on Earth...?. Luc, that's just... it's _ridiculous!_"

His friend barked out a laugh that had just a hint of sheer hysteria. Gray eyes shone, like polished diamonds, and that cultured voice shook audibly when it added very fiercely:

"It wasn't at all _ridiculous,_ Severus!. It was a _miracle._ I _loved_ every bloody second of it all, and you... you poor, old bastard... You've got to finally be treated as you should have been all along and you were not even _there_ to enjoy any of it!"

Ringing silence followed that assertion and they both sat, stunned and utterly drained, staring right at each other for a very long time...

"I can't _believe_ it!. It all sounds so... far _fetched,_ Luc!. Did it never occur to you that things were simply... too _good_ to be true?"

Silver eyes acquired the very harshness of cut diamonds.

"Yes, my friend: Those kind of ideas _did_ _occur_ to me. I even went through a _long_ period of enough cynical disbelief to fall a Mountain Troll, all of it on your behalf.

Then I stopped judging it all through the eyes of a man who's fought two wars. I _remembered_ how I felt when I was young and had the whole world at my feet. I remembered what I wanted and how I saw the world around me. How very simple everything seemed to me then: life was made for either war or peace. There was either hatred or forgiveness. Love or friendship. Light magic or dark... and I suddenly _understood_ what I was seeing...

It is all distressingly _obvious,_ in my opinion, although I know that you will fail to see it for a very long time."

Severus was peeved something fierce with that little cryptic rant. He disliked mind-games more than almost anything else and the fact that Luc, _LUC,_ was now playing one on him was beyond maddening!.

"And this amazingly inspired _truth_ of yours that I'll be too blind and jaded to see is...?" The question broke for freedom among clipped, frozen vowels. A tone that could have flayed dragons all but shaping them into vicious, cutting life. But his friend didn't appear much enthused to respond.

There was a smile, though: a soothing and gentle thing being directed towards him from those pale lips and Luc's voice, when it finally bothered to break the silence, was unusually gentle:

"I won't put you through the _shock_ that the answer will bring you. Not right now, at least, Severus. I actually think that things might turn out for the better if I let you figure this one out at your own pace..."

"Oh, For Merlin's sake, Luc!. Since _when_ have you ever bothered to sugar-coat any bad news that you had to give me?"

White blond hair fell around those beautiful features like a curtain of sunlight when the pureblood's head turned very slightly to the left, in order to study him intently:

"These are _not_ bad news, my friend. Not bad at all. This is the moment when the Founders have, finally, pulled their heads out of their arses and are actually _seeing_ you clearly, at at last!. This is the answer to every single prayer that I've ever offered to the Heavens on your behalf, Severus Snape, and you were exactly right in your assessment of this particular situation, as usual: it all comes down to Harry Potter, my friend. It all comes down to him, _indeed..._"

TBC...


	9. Chapter 9

_**The voice under all silences. Chapter 9**_

He startled awake with the unshakable certainty that he was in danger.

His muscles froze with the knowledge that some unnamed person was very close by, sitting quietly in the chair beside his bed. Their hand had just lifted and was attempting to breach the barely there distance between them in order to... _touch_ him.

He _detested_ foreign touch with the kind of passion others usually reserve for abominable reptiles.

His first thought was for his posture: he was lying on his side, curled protectively over the left half of his body in a move he only ever made when truly injured. He remembered then that his left side was out of commission, the bones shattered and rejecting healing magic.

He was in St Mungo's. Recovering from the damage caused by the botched vow that he'd been _tricked_ into making. Tricked by _Potter,_ of all people...

Sleep-fogged recollection brought the awareness that his wand... his wand was _missing._ His magic _unreachable._ The room opened to anyone who'd cared to enter... _anyone!._

In the very next second the cold air around his face warmed slightly. The prickly awareness of someone else's magic, much too close to him, plunged his clammy skin into a fire of wild energy...

His right hand shot out to curl with all his might around a masculine wrist, thwarting whomever was trying to harm him mid-action. A startled gasp broke the heavy silence of the room, granting him the advantage of those precious seconds needed to turn his thumb around in preparation for breaking the bones that he now held, as tightly as he possibly could, underneath his finger-pads.

"By Merlin, Severus!. I have spent so long sitting beside your unresponsive body all these years that I'd forgotten how... _deadly..._ your reactions tend to be!. Calm down, will you?. I mean you absolutely no harm_..."_

Ebony eyes shot open without warning and his fierce glare settled over the very amused face of the auror from Hell. His fingers flinched away from all contact with that wide hand and he waited, breath held tight, for the other man to punch him into a pulp. Puzzlingly wary features studied his own for a very long time. The disconcertingly unfamiliar silver frames of Potter's spectacles caught the faint light when his head finally cocked to the side:

"You broke my _nose._ Ron has been laughing at me non-stop since he found out"

If the little toe-rag was expecting an apology from him, then he'll still be waiting when Hell froze. He was going to stick by his own rules, even if the bastard decided to crush his every bone in vengeful retaliation:

"You _deserved_ it, Potter!"

A sigh that was deep, frayed and far more weary than Severus had expected it to be broke the impasse:

"Yes. I did definitely deserve it"

Silence...

Painful. Deadly. Sickeningly uncomfortable silence.

He had _not_ been expecting that admission. Had assumed the very worst and now he floundered in a sea of deep bewilderment. There was astonished disbelief fleeting through his mind. There was a kind of suspicious wariness that was whispering all kinds of warnings in the back of his head as he simply laid there: utterly stunned by the auror's easy acceptance of wrongdoing.

There are people in the world who'd only pounce on you when your back is turned. Not that he'd ever pegged Potter to be that kind of coward, but then...

He'd never pegged him for a _deceitful,_ _vengeful,_ son of a... and the jerk had just proven him wrong in the most humiliating way possible. Showing finally, and beyond a shadow of doubt, just how much like his happily defunct dogfather he could be...

"Weren't you stuck downstairs?" He growled irritably when he couldn't abide the increasingly tense atmosphere for a single second longer. His words seemed to vanish both, the very heaviness in the air that surrounded them and the rigidity that held his companion's shoulders into a fairly good imitation of a roughly-hewn monolith. They just... _dissolved _when the boy started chuckling, a touch of hysteria tainting the disquieting sound.

Potter's eyes danced merrily. A small smile that was slightly rueful around the edges flashed in the faint gloom of dusk towards him.

"I _escaped._ They were driving me crazy with their ridiculous fussing and Malfoy refused to tell me how you were..."

His brain froze, pale visage losing all color as he almost barked:

"You've seen Draco?"

The boy's features turned stony. Emerald-flashed emotions painted dark shadows in the beauty of Lily's eyes as a pair of rose-tinged lips compressed with absolutely livid disgust

"Do _not_ start with _that_ again, Severus!" The tone was frosty. A strange mixture of exhausted exasperation and sheer poison that rose his hackles almost as badly as it worried him. Potter straightened in annoyance and he used the new and welcome distance to breathe with relief. He did not want to lay down on his bed while the other man loomed over him like a menacing shadow...

He rolled over. Injured arm protesting dully when the ward flashed it's shimmering blue warnings upon collision of his bony shoulder with the soft surface of the mattress.

The auror's eyes looked fierce. His lips were pressed too tightly and the faint shadow of the stubble that grew so darkly against his angular jawbone did nothing to soften the impression of a man about as wild as a black panther.

"Do you need a hand, Severus?"

The question broke the stillness like a shot fired from close range. The growled quality of it's tone revealed those six words to be nothing short of a challenge. He resented them so totally that his teeth gritted with force enough to chip them. He'd look _spineless_ if he said no. He'd feel _pathetic_ if he complied...

Mutinous defiance fleeted through his eyes as he shot daggers into the twat's hard face.

"I don't want _anything_ from you!" He whispered fiercely. Ashen face twisting with rancorous dislike when the creature simply shrugged it's wide shoulders.

"What you _want,_ Severus, and what you _need_ are two things about as far from each other as Heaven is from Hell. I'm afraid that I care not about the former, at least for the moment. Merlin knows that, if allowed, you'd _vanish_ yourself from here without giving anyone the chance to find out exactly what could happen if you'd only opened up to life for one bloody second!"

The boy lurched then towards him, grabbing him most rudely. He'd been stunned into speechless, traumatized compliance by that berating diatribe and the unwelcome arms of his new nemesis curled so gently around him that the shield which protected his left limb wasn't given the smallest chance to flash. Not even once!.

The... the... _presumption_ of the brat took his breath away. He could not believe his senses. He'd gladly pay any amount of gold that was demanded of him for having the pleasure of allowing himself to be convinced that he was _dreaming_ this whole ghastly scenario.

But when one slow second irreversibly turned into another without the whole Potter-holding-him-thing having dissolved into a relieving _puff_ of feverish _imagination._.. he became indignant enough to chew a Hungarian Horntail's bone right off the flank of its fire-breathing owner.

Potter pulled him up so very slowly... Seemingly _lost_ in the task of fluffing up the mess of pillows behind his back, like some kind of fussy mother-hen.

He was dragged upwards firmly. Painfully emaciated upper body pulled, blankets and all, towards the overwhelming warmth that was so casually emanating from the wide expanse of a scathingly covered chest. His forehead was directed towards the masculine-scented hollow to be found between Potter's collarbone and neck with merciless gentleness and he stiffened with paralyzed shock. He rejected the boy's very nearness with every fiber of his rigid body and tried to yank his head away, as if burned, only to be held fast by the warm and callused palm that settled against the back of his head in a careful, but firm, staying motion:

"Ssshh!... Severus, ssshh!. There is no need for you to panic. If you'd just... wait one second... I'll be done with these pillows and set you back on the bed, OK?"

Senses reeling with the shaming _indignity_ of finding himself gentled like a two-year old toddler he pushed against that restraining hand with the kind of ever-weakening strength that only increased his resentment.

"Release me, Potter. At once!"

A gentle chuckle reverberated across that wide chest. Rolling, like thunder, beneath the length of his cheek, which was quite uncomfortably plastered against the soft cloth of Potter's too-thin top.

It was then that the disconcertingly grave voice of the little menace broke, like jagged shards of shattered glass, across his fuming senses:

"Gosh... You are so _prickly!._.. It's like trying to help a wounded beast from the forest. You drive me mad with that stubborn independence of yours, with all that crazy hatred... You make me forget, more often than I should, that you... you are only _trying_ to _defend_ yourself from _me._.. Aren't you, Severus?"

Fingers dug into his scalp, _dared_ to _toy_ with his long hair before his skull was suddenly seized, cradled gently against a callused wide palm that proceeded to ease him slowly backwards. His face was forced to abandon the relative refuge of Potter's shoulder. Exposed, in all it's ugly and frayed glory, to those eyes that shone like leaves...

He swallowed thickly. Trapped, once again, inside another one of those strange and uncomfortable moments that this man seemed able to create between them with such ease. He was lost, floundering within the disturbing miasma of Potter's bewildering emotions. Disconcertingly aware of the aching, desperate sadness that was so clearly visible in the depths of those beautiful eyes... and he wanted not a second more of it. He could not, would _not_, deal with the boy's fragility. He did not want to deal with it. There was no reason at all for him to do so and he resented the odd _intimacy_ of the whole puzzling situation.

"Let _go_ of me!" He demanded in the kind of frosty tone that used to make Hufflepuffs cry and the hand that was cradling his head twitched slightly.

Emerald eyes clashed with his own and James Potter's spawn had the gall to growl at him with obvious annoyance:

"I'm not doing anything awful to you. There's no reason to get _huffy_, Professor!"

Severus gritted his teeth. Black eyes narrowed with displeasure when he growled right back, feeling utterly peeved:

"I _dislike_ being _manhandled_ by anyone, Potter. I want you to _remove_ your hands from my person, right this second!"

That brilliant gaze became visibly colder. A veritable world of awfully dark shadows filled those verdant depths with sombre, distressed gloom.

"Malfoy touched you every bloody second that he was here!. I didn't hear you complain a single time then... _Nope_!. I remember it quite clearly, Sir, not even a _twitch_ of annoyance left those prissy lips of yours, Professor."

-What the Hell...?-

That bewildering tirade was turning more _agitated_ by the syllable and he blinked in disconcerted anxiety. He didn't know how to react to the strange situation. Was absolutely _mystified_ by the inappropriate tinge of... _Possessiveness_?... that he'd sensed somewhere among all that disturbing pile of nonsense. He had never before been on the receiving end of a... _Potterish._.. break-down, at least not one that he had to endure right down to it's dearly-wished-for conclusion...

Lily's child seemed to have no need for his input at all, though, and proceeded to... _rant_... even _further_ without granting him the chance to cut him off.

"You were more than happy with the blasted Ferret's smarmy smiles and his touchy-feely approach to godchild-like concern. He plants those _paws_ of his All. Over. You, and you don't even bat and eyelash!. But when I so much as help you sit up... then the whole bloody world must come to a stop!. Gosh... It must be the _apocalypse!_... How could you possibly be expected to endure such awful _ordeal_? Well, tough luck, Snape!. You'll have to take it like a man and stop whining, for Godric's sake!. It's not as if my _touch_ alone is going to _kill_ you, you know?"

He was stunned into speechlessness. Bewildered beyond all reason and all response. He had not a single clue about what in the bloody Hell was _wrong_ with the utter menace. He blinked once. Twice.

Then he swallowed uneasily before trying to free himself again...

Potter flushed as he squirmed, but held on, clearly attempting to keep contact. Then the boy allowed that overly _familiar_ hand of his to fall away with a sigh of desperate frustration. His back was left bereft of the auror's support so suddenly that it plopped against the pillows like an emptying balloon, and a fierce flash of blue rose from the ward on his arm.

Green eyes settled over the limb with a distressed kind of agony:

"Did I hurt your arm?. Gosh... I'm so sorry!"

The words rang in the growing silence when Severus didn't bother to respond. He was too busy frowning at the steadily paling face of his companion. Dark brows furrowed together into elegant lines of thoughtful reflection as he pondered the headache-inducing conundrum of the auror's inexplicable behavior:

"What game are we _playing_ at here, exactly, Potter?" He demanded at last, pronouncing every single word carefully. Concisely. With a frosty tone that clearly implied that he'd take no more nonsense from the child. Potter sat upon the mattress like a statue. A distressed kind of moan broke away from slightly trembling lips as the auror's wide and tanned hand raked strangely twitchy fingers all over that wild mop of black hair.

"We are not _playing_ any games, Severus"

The answer was quietly voiced and the green eyes that settled over his own, offered him nothing but sincerity. No... No_._ _Apparent_ sincerity.

"You used Felix Felicis against me. That doesn't sound like a game that we are _not_ playing, Potter. There are all kinds of ethical reasons why that potion should be banned. It should have been condemned into obscurity years ago, carefully locked inside the same cabinet as the Amortencia and all the others just like it"

Bright green eyes widened in sickened dismay.

"You are taking all of this out of proportion, Professor. Felix Felicis doesn't _force_ you to do anything against your will"

Severus' own bark of laughter was a croak of bitter derision:

"Doesn't it?. It allows whoever drinks it to get away with whatever it is that takes their fancy. They all get the instinct they _need_ in order to manipulate everyone around them into giving them exactly what they want. Do you really think there's any power on this Earth that would have convinced me, _ME_, Potter!, of agreeing to _swear_ any kind of Wizard's Oath with you, let alone one that _requires_ my own continuing lack of free will, to top it all off?"

Ashen features seemed to crumple before him, green eyes becoming awash with a sorrow that seemed to be heavy enough to break their owner:

"Yes. I know. I _know _that I was a _bastard,_ but I honestly never imagined that the potion would take that God-awful path!. I wish it hadn't done that, but it _did_ and I... I am _not_ _sorry_!... Do you hear me, Snape?: I. Am. Not. Sorry!. I tried _so hard_ to get you to listen to me... But no. Oh, no!, listening to _Harry-Bloddy-Potter_ must be the ultimate sin to the Greatest-Prat-Who-Ever-Held-A-Grudge in this wide Earth. It was just... _IMPOSSIBLE_! to even say a word to you without hearing you spout those ridiculous accusations all over the place!..."

Temper flared in his chest with the empty excuses. He disliked the implications that he could hear and his tone became just... _Arctic._.. when he growled:

"Ridiculous?. Really?. Was I being _ridiculous_ when I doubted the intentions of the man who so very callously told me he'll rob Draco of his whole soul?. Was I being _absurd_ in becoming suspicious of the monster who was, as a matter of fact, actively _TRICKING_ me into _SLAVERY_?. Do you really have the gall to call me _names_ after your repellently deceptive behavior, Harry Potter?"

There was a gasp of shattered remorse. Green eyes filled with bright tears that refused to drip down. The auror's face turned chalky pale and the hand that had dared to restrain him fluttered, quite aimlessly, in the space that separated them.

"I only wanted you to _listen_ to me!. Just... just listen!. It was not so awful a thing to wish for. I've waited for you to wake with so much _hope._.. but you... _you_ wanted nothing, _NOTHING_ _WHATSOEVER_, to do with _me_ and I... I didn't _know_ what else to _do_!"

His eyes zeroed in on that flushed face. Attempted to _discern_ just... what the meaning of that senseless diatribe could possibly be, but he failed the task miserably. Gryffindors were, by their very thoughtless nature, quite impossible to analyze. Understanding them or, even more accurately: trying to understand them, was as futile an endeavor as attempting to grab moon-rays with one's bare hands...

"I had _nothing_ left to say to you, Potter. I took care of all of that when I thought that I was dying. I'd passed on Albus' final instructions to the best of my ability and the rest, as they say, was plainly irrelevant!. There was nothing I'd have cared to hear that could have possibly fallen from your lips. I was _finished_ with you. Completely and totally finished!. The Lord was dead. The war was over. You were finally safe and sound, despite my own expectations, and that set me totally free from the self-imposed task of looking after you. What on Earth led you to believe that there was even the need for us to meet, Potter?"

Silence rang and rang and _rang_ in the awful quiet that ensued.

Potter seemed to have been paralyzed by his response and he, in all honesty, did not _care_ to continue with such difficult and truly discomfiting conversation. He expected the hard moment to stretch on, endlessly. The very air to turn bitter with resentment and unvoiced, virulent accusations. He expected Potter to remove himself from the edge of the mattress and abandon the room in a storm of fierce silence, but the boy just... sat there. Mournful eyes blinking painfully through a virtual sea of trembling, crystalline tears...

"What about what _I_ wanted, professor?" He finally whispered in a low and ferocious whisper. "What about the fact that _I_ have _things_ to say to you?. What about the idea that I _deserved_ at least a second of your precious time to tell you that I... I was _wrong_ about you all along, and you were gone before I even knew it!...

What about allowing _ME_ to tell _YOU_ that there was a time, probably among the worst weeks of my life, when I thought that you had died for real in that blasted shack. _Died_ because I hated you, during those last moments of your life, enough to Not. Even. _Bother._ Trying. To. _Save._ You!"

Severus' heart had come to an abrupt halt.

The unexpected apology scrapped against his senses like a million poisoned daggers...

"You were never meant to feel guilty, Potter. Albus and I... we had an _agreement._ You'd be kept as far away as possible from me and I'd... I'd protect you from the beast who murdered your mother.

I had no _expectations_ of loyalty from you and, as I didn't really die anyway, there is now no reason at all to tie you to those feelings any longer..."

Potter's chuckle was exhausted, a fragile little sound that faltered too easily:

"You are so _blind._.."

Trembling fingers breached the space that separated them to card through his hair carefully, a single lock of midnight-colored hair was looped with utter gentleness behind the curve of his left ear and he frowned. Paralyzed and all but floored by the strange, intimate touch.

"I _want_ to be _tied_ to you, Severus Snape... I am, thank Godric!, actually _tied_ to you quite tightly through the wording of our vow, a vow that would have never happened without the potion. So... don't even _try_ to make me _regret_ having the good sense of grabbing onto that one chance with both hands.

Felix Felicis might be more of a _weapon_ for scoundrels, thieves and manipulators than I'd ever given it credit for before, but it did give me exactly what I wanted. It brought _US_ _here,_ to this point where your future is virtually entwined with mine. Things might _not_ be exactly how I wanted them to be... but, on the bright side, I have now far more time than I ever thought you'd grant me.

You can't leave me now, Severus. Will you try to _understand_ that part, at least?. You'll have to _listen,_ not only to what you want to hear, but also to the things that I am actually _saying._.. and I'm _praying_, Professor, for the day when you'll do _more_ than that. I am _hoping_ for the moment when you will also _see._.."

TBC...


	10. Chapter 10

_**THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 10**_

Minnie came to offer him a veritable storm of sternly voiced regrets and unexpected sympathy. She arrived late, the school's hectic timetable having kept her away until that very moment, apparently.

He smiled to himself ruefully upon hearing her say that, a million memories of her crazy little rules flying through his head in the space of a blink. -It must be Friday, then- he thought, incongruously, and a wave of fierce longing for the friendship they'd once shared shook his whole frame.

"You do look better, Severus. I confess I was distressed the last time I saw you. Never thought I'd get to find you in such a good shape so soon afterwards, particularly not after Draco reported Harry's latest blunder"

Widened black eyes blinked in disconcerted confusion.

"Draco?. I wasn't even sure if you actually knew my godson's given name. To hear you make use of it so casually... it's an absolute shock"

Prim lips tightened in displeased reproof.

"It'd be all kinds of unprofessional not to know the name of one of my colleagues, Severus. How on Earth would I address him otherwise?"

His arms closed over his chest in a defensive, guarding motion.

"Draco is studying Potions. There is no way that he is still at Hogwarts, least of all teaching a bunch of brats for a small pittance..."

The most annoyed kind of little silence pulsed all around, for a second. Deep brown eyes, hidden behind those frighteningly stern half-moon spectacles of hers, flashed with familiar Scotswoman displeasure:

"I see that you are still an absolute terror, Severus Snape!. How dare you disparage our esteemed profession in quite those awful terms?. I'll have you know that Draco Malfoy did, indeed, study Potions. His knowledge of the science was so great that the Mastery Guild of Potioneers and Alchemists had to develop a special, accelerated course, to suit his needs. He has been teaching at Hogwarts for two years now and we have been very blessed, indeed, to have secured his services. Every single laboratory, from here to blasted Russia, is trying to steal him away from us!"

The sheer pleasure that warmed his heart with pride, upon hearing her rant, knew no limits. He was absolutely ecstatic about these news and the rare, sunny smile that curved his thin lips upwards managed to make even Minnie falter right in the middle of a head full of steam to stare at him.

"You drive me crazy!" She intoned, halfway between stern and frustrated with him, but he ignored her regally. He actually felt buoyant enough to laugh. Yes... laugh... out loud!.

Delighted indulgence flashed through Minnie's brown eyes and she smiled at him widely, shaking her head ruefully all the time.

"You are pleased about our struggles, I see... Always thought you doted on that boy more than was healthy but he did, in the end, prove that you did know what you were doing, after all...

You've managed the impossible as far as your own peers are concerned, my friend. You have trained the youngest Potion Master ever born. On your first go, no less!. Half the confirmed prodigies in the craft are waiting for you, Severus Snape, to accept their Mentorship applications"

His joy dimmed very slightly upon hearing her say that, he had not trained Draco for the glory of it nor had he ever truly expected to receive anything from it, apart from the sheer pleasure of seeing his boy's eyes shine with the same passion for the craft that he himself felt. The infinite hours spent brewing together had been more of a joy than a chore. Nothing whatsoever in common with the headache-inducing trauma of having to teach to a bunch of ignorant, little runts things that they'd never wanted to be taught, to begin with.

"There can be nobody else, Minnie. I couldn't teach worth a knut for twenty years."

She blinked at him, astonished:

"You've turned daft!. I haven't heard greater nonsense since you insisted on allowing that fool, Lockhart, to go ahead with that ridiculous dueling-club idea of his, in Harry's second year!."

He stiffened, outraged. Dark eyes raking her pinched face with as much displeasure as she was showing.

"How could you have forgotten that I am simply... abysmal when it comes to impart my knowledge?.

Minnie... we must have fought like cat and dog because of this at least six billion times!"

Her stance relaxed slightly and a smile that was short, but genuine, flashed across her features like quick lightening.

"It was like cat and bat, I believe, Severus. Merlin knows that the student's like to carry on with each other's jokes, until no one remembers who even started them in the first place..."

He allowed himself to sag against the high backrest of the chair he was seated on. Dark hair fell across his cheekbones, veiling his thoughtful expression when his head turned to stare out the window in order to avoid her searching eyes.

Silence settled between them, both uncomfortably aware of the million and one issues that they had managed to avoid talking about, so far. He wondered how long that particular status quo would remain and what, exactly, could he do to stall her completely. She wasn't the head of Gryffindor for nothing, after all...

Minnie fidgeted with the train of her lightweight tartan and a clearly heartfelt sigh rent the air.

"You were not so bad a teacher, Severus. Your short temper and that awfully unjust tendency of yours to favor your own slytherins were more of a personality issue than a lack of ability on your part. While you were at the helm of the subject Hogwarts student's consistently topped both: the O.W.L and N.W.E.T level tests for the whole of Europe"

His snort would have silenced anyone but her.

"Those ridiculous examinations concentrate on issues relating to safety, Minnie. Any idiot would pass them!"

Her chuckle was warm and soothing.

"Yes. I've heard that about... How much was it?... Ah, yes: you've told me that six billions times already"

He shook his head in defeat. He'd always found it too hard to stick to his point while arguing with her. She had a tendency to unravel his every grievance with the liberal application of a gentle touch of humor that, ultimately, managed to disarm him every time.

"I won't teach again, Minerva. I _can't!._ Please, don't ask such thing of me..."

Her gaze raked his face quietly, soft brown eyes filled with tears.

"Were those years truly so awful for you, Severus?. I thought we had fun. Not always, of course. And definitely not ever at the very end, but... in the years before that... well, I remember plenty of joy!"

His attention remained fixed on the small garden outside. Yellow flowers swayed gently in the late evening breeze and a few small, black birds fluttered among the lower branches of the tree in the corner...

He could not take her circling around the issue any longer. She'd say her piece in the end, of that he was utterly convinced. Better instead to stunt her painfully obvious approach and just... force the issue himself, attempt to turn it into the shortest discussion they'd ever had:

"You don't have to be sorry, Minnie. You were only ever guilty of being... _you._ Straightforward and brave. A loyal friend, right to the very end, for those who stayed beside you..."

Her gasp trembled in the air that separated them. Gentle, sorrow-tainted words fell from her lips:

"YOU were among those who stayed beside me. You worked tirelessly on our behalf and we left you all alone... For Merlin's sake, Severus, I even tried to kill you!"

He looked into her pale face then. The kind of anger that feels black, like a thundercloud, glittered within his already dark eyes, making him look fierce with intractable aplomb:

"Merlin knows that you were tricked into believing exactly what Albus wanted you to believe. It wasn't your fault at all Minerva. We were at war!. I have no intention of seating through the painful delivery of a million of these apologies coming from any one of you. Albus made his demands of me and I... I agreed to carry them out, knowing all along what they were going to mean for my own standing with the Order's other members. That's the sum total of it and I shall not hear a single word more on the matter!"

Minnie's lined face was sombre with ashen discontent:

"You can't rob me of the chance to have my say about this, Severus Snape!. Not when I have waited four long years to have this out with you.

I deserve to have the chance to apologize, just as much as you deserve the chance to hear it. I don't know what Albus was thinking!. I don't care what reasons he gave you, at the time, to explain his actions but... to order you to kill him was just... MONSTROUS!. He knew that you loved him like a father and he used that very affection against you. The fact that he, not only dared to do it, but also demanded that you carry it all out without any support was even more unforgivable!"

His ears rang with the force of her fierce words. Stern, incensed condemnation was clear in every line of that aged, familiar body. He was shocked to feel himself almost dissolving with the relief of not having to endure any more... censure, at least not from her. But he had no desire to listen to anyone raking over every memory of those painful last months with the hindsight that time so often brings...

"The past is gone, Minnie. It all happened too long ago to be undone and I have no wish to revisit any of it, not any more. Not right now and, probably, not for a good long time...

Please, PLEASE... I beg of you!... Do me the courtesy of respecting my wishes on this matter"

A lone tear ran down from the edge of her right eye, all the way across her pale cheek, and she raised a shaking hand to wipe it off. Silence fell and it was filled with words unspoken. With emotions that were being ruthlessly bottled into unwilling oblivion by her obvious attempt to comply with his request.

Her lips forced up a smile. A tight thing that was brittle like old bones and, also like bones, it was strong enough to support the both of them throughout the awful moment.

"This is hard for me, Severus. So very hard..."

Her confession was her olive-branch to him. An admission of her weakness, a request for help and comfort... It brought them both, in the space of a single and terrified heartbeat, right to the same point where they had once been. Back to the days before their whole world began to tumble down around them, and he wanted nothing more than to grab on to this second chance with all of his strength:

"I am here now, Minnie, neither of us is alone..."

She stood up then and lurched towards him in a flurry of soft tartan and tears.

"I have missed you so much, child!"

Her arms fell around him and he hung on to them tightly, his dark head rested in the crook of her arm when he hid his pale face against the folds of her dress. They stood like that for a long time. Thin frames entwined as he sat rigidly in his chair and allowed her slight figure to loom over his own and hug him like a mother. He had needed this kind of support so much, back when there was nothing but brutality to be found within Hogwarts ancient walls... When the castle that he'd been privileged enough to call home for so long had been under attack from those who'd called him a brother...

Home... he did not know if he'd ever return there. Back to the school's familiar corridors. Back to the grounds that had seen him grow up, become a boy unlucky in love. A spiteful traitor. Then a spy bent on revenge... He'd found forgiveness there and a kind of peace that he had treasured dearly, only to be forced to betray everything that he'd come to cherish in the most heartbreaking way. He'd done that for Albus. For Draco. For the good of the school itself. For Harry Potter...

As if reading the thought from his mind she sighed deeply. Easing herself slightly off she brushed a long lock of hair off his pale face and asked him outright:

"Is it true that they will let you out tomorrow?"

A strange shiver of cold dread slithered down his back and sheer panic began to whirl within his empty stomach, as the sickening disorientation that gripped him every single time he thought of the uncertain future that awaited him took hold of his reeling senses for the millionth time that day.

"That's what Healer Jones told me. Yes."

He knew at once that his response had been too curt. Minnie's brow furrowed and a light of obvious worry appeared within her soft brown eyes

"Harry says that you've accepted to stay at that muggle apartment of his, but Draco... I don't know if you are aware of this or not, but... your godchild disapproves of that particular choice of yours, Severus. Very vocally, I might add"

His long fingers rose as he deliberately waved them vaguely in a little dismissive gesture that gave force to his own comment:

"Draco... yes. He is not very happy with me at the moment" He sighed wearily, sooty-lashed eyelids coming down to shield the desolate expression in his eyes from unwanted scrutiny: "What else can I do, Minnie?. This blasted arm refuses to be healed by either magic means or Skele-Gro. It reacts rather badly to most wizarding contraptions. That is why they placed me inside a magic-dampening room in the first place... Draco wants me to go to the Manor, he says that they'll put wards all around the West Wing to make it safe for me, but... that's too much trouble to put them trough when going along with Potter's suggestion is just... easier"

Minnie smiled understandingly at him and the gentle pressure of her reassuring pat to his shoulder told him, without further words, that she'd accepted the excuse.

"Your unexpected condition was a shock to us all. You were almost recovered when your transfer to Azkaban became a necessity and, although a few of us were denied visiting rights in those weeks due to your sudden deterioration in health, no one was truly expecting what we found when your release finally went through. I haven't experienced the kind of terror that gripped me on the night you were released, since the end of the war, Severus!"

He was stunned once more by that frustratingly discordant piece of information.

He felt raw. Exhausted. Dizzy with the constant up and downs of his new situation. He had heard something like this from Luc's own lips, but the truth was that... nothing seemed to make sense!. Nothing matched his own memories of the same events and he was tired, so very tired, of feeling this lack of control that left him... reeling.

"I don't remember any of that, Minerva" He whispered suddenly. His overwhelmed frame of mind forcing him to almost growl those damming words, to spill them forwards even though he had not really intended to do so. His companion looked at him as if he were crazy.

"Of course you don't!. You were suspended in a spell-induced coma that you were, quite stubbornly, refusing to wake from"

He was floored by that answer so completely that he allowed his dark eyes to openly show the distress that constricted his throat fiercely. He refused to be gentled. Quietly manipulated straight into conviction, by anyone. Least of all Minerva!.

There were things with this story that were digging painful shards of utter distrust throughout the landscape of his mind and he found himself unable to hold back the most inelegant snort of disbelief:

"We always had the counter to Nagini's venom. I brewed it myself for Arthur Weasley when he was bitten by the rotten thing, during Potter's fifth year. I continued brewing it regularly thereafter, because that blasted serpent was one of the Dark Lord's preferred weapons of choice.

Tell me, Minerva, how is it possible that it took me, ME!, four years to get treatment when I know for a fact that fixing that particular problem takes no longer than seventy-two hours?"

She looked ready to faint from the sheer shock of being so brutally asked such a question. Her fingers shook with distressed anxiety as they fell away from him when she jerked back with graceless urgency, in order to look him straight in the eyes:

"None of the other victims carried the Dark Mark. The beast's venom had been magically altered, somehow. It reacted with the obscure essence of the Morsmordre that was left behind, in the mark itself, after it was used to brand you. This was something that we found out much later, Severus. It took us years to understand what, exactly, was so different about you that the wound would fail to close Every. Single. Time. We. Tried. To. Do. It!"

His whole being had turned to stone.

"The venom was linked to Dark Magic?... But that means it feeds on it!. That I'll always have traces of it running through my veins for as long as I carry the Mark. It means that if someone, anyone, performs enough dark curses on me and manages to raise the toxin's level to the right proportions... I'll succumb to the damn thing, regardless"

Minnie looked just as ghostly white as he himself did.

"Yes, my friend, that's exactly what it means. That's what happened to you while you were locked in Azkaban, don't you see?.

Peterssen... Healer Peterssen was in possession of that knowledge. Because of his close association with Harry, at the time of their discovery, he knew things about your situation that had been kept away from public record and he... he used all of that knowledge against us. Against you, Severus, in a sickening bid to take one last wounding shot at that poor boy..."

His throat dried and his heart pounded as he finally began to understand what had happened to him. No. Not to him exactly. To his vanished health...

"I see. It was all because of Potter, of course. I should have guessed..." Was all that he managed to utter, but he feared that he saw... nothing at all.

He understood now that he had a... regrettably chronic condition. One that would forever render him extra-vulnerable to the damaging effects of Dark Magic. He also understood just how... imperative... it was for him to protect himself even more carefully. How any sort of magic performed upon his person might end up affecting him in unexpected and dangerous ways from this moment on...

What he did not understand was why, exactly, Peterssen had hated him so completely. How was it possible for any man, least of all one that he himself had never actually met before, to come to the bewildering conclusion that causing him harm would, in turn, harm Harry-Bloody-Potter?.

To have every one around him actually thinking that such ridiculous idea made any sense at all was just... mind-boggling enough to make him doubt the sanity of the whole lot!.

Minnie hovered uncertainly by his side. Soft brown eyes alight with worried indecision.

"I thought Harry told you all of this..." She whispered at last, in a tone gone gruff with concern."He was supposed to bring you up to speed with everything that you needed to know, as soon as you recovered."

A great sigh exploded from his lips and he brought up a hand to rub soothingly at the prominent bump that deformed the bridge of his nose.

"I'm afraid that I was... disinclined... to listen to Mr. Potter, Minerva. It has been quite the shock to discover that everyone expects me to embrace the menace, with open arms, no less, just because he happened to decide that my actions during the war weren't so totally loathsome, after all."

She stiffened in outraged disapproval.

"You are so horrible sometimes that I wish I could spank you until you bleed, Severus Snape!. You've got to try and remember that the boy is not his father, for Merlin's sake!.

How long are you going to carry on detesting James Potter? The man has been dead by now for longer than you ever had to deal with him!"

He felt slapped by those words. Chastised. Treated like a silly, unruly child for the apparently terrible crime of detesting Potter Sr. The bitter resentment that engulfed his emotions knew no bounds and he looked straight at her with outraged animosity:

"I'll detest whomever I desire for as long as I see fit, Minerva!"

She didn't even try to restrain the sharpness of her retort. Her pale, old cheeks were rosy with temper and her frail hands curled into fists.

"Of course you will, Severus!. Godric forbid that you shall ever realize how very... damaging your hatred of a ghost has become!. You can not see the boy behind the shadow of the father and the very worst of it is that you'll never find the great treasure that could so very easily be yours, until you dare to abandon these old grudges. James Potter is dead and buried, for Magic's sake!. And so is Lily Potter, no matter how much you might wish for her to be still among the living!"

He saw red at that moment. Ferocious anger turned his dark eyes to chips of ice.

He would not forgive this. He. Could. Not. Forgive. This!. He refused to be spoken to in that manner by anyone at all:

"LEAVE!" He ordered her through gritted teeth, with a tone as hard as pebbles.

She stared dumbly at him. Gasped in outraged indignation and drew herself as tall as she could possibly become by standing almost on tiptoe:

"I will most certainly do nothing of the kind!. I am sorry if I offended you, Severus. Causing you pain was never my intention. But I'm worried about you, child!. Worried sick right out of my mind. I was trying to force some modicum of sense into that thickened skull of yours!"

He could feel the strength of his own fury diminishing, despite the fact that his pulse still thundered against his wrists with the force of a galloping hippogryph and his face was flushed with ugly, temper-fueled splotches.

"Do not tell me how to feel, Minerva. I have lived long enough without the interference of my mother and I resent your attempt to take on her long-abandoned mantle"

Her assent was too tight and too fast to be true agreement but he lacked the strength to fight her any further... They had always clashed fiercely in the past, not that any of their former disagreements had ever managed to push Minerva Mcgonagal away. Or even into a modicum of reserve when it came to those issues that she knew, without a shadow of doubt, would rile his temper.

Sighing wearily he allowed himself to sag against the tall backrest of his hospital chair and returned his gaze, blindly, to the window.

Dusk had fallen at some point during her visit and the flowers were now faint blotches of gray. He imagined the small birds he'd glimpsed earlier curled securely somewhere, within the safety of whatever nests they had built for themselves among the branches of the only tree that he could see, and a small, wistful smile curved his thin lips.

How he wished that he could be that small, that carefree. How he wished that he had nothing more urgent to do than find himself safe shelter... but finding shelter for himself had been something that he'd never truly mastered throughout his life, at least not so far...

So simple a task, really, but it had escaped him completely almost every time. He'd believed in the wrong people, put his trust on the wrong hands and had been betrayed, time and time again, by those he'd loved to distraction...

Shelter meant safety. And warmth. And feeling... simply full.

Full of food. Full of life. Full of hope. Full of love...

He was suddenly hammered by the unwelcome realization that he had rarely felt more wretched than right at that second in all of his life...

"I must get going, Severus. It's getting late and I should really be present at the Great Hall for dinner"

Minnie's voice broke the thread of his suddenly gloomy thoughts and he turned around to stare at her once more.

"It has been great to see you, Minnie. Hard, of course, but also great" The words flew out of his lips before he thought to censor them and he was startled into acknowledging that he hadn't wanted to censor them at all. Not really.

He was suddenly tired of all the hiding that he had done. He had precious little need to keep secrets from her, after all. No any more...

"I shall visit you at that place of Harry's over the weekend. There are certain urgent things that we must discuss, now that you are finally awake. But I'll allow you to leave the hospital before I start to bother you with all of that. Enjoy the rest of your evening, my friend. I will see you soon..."

She bent down to place a small, dry-lipped kiss over his cheek and he froze with deep surprise at the spontaneous gesture. Her mouth curved into a smile upon hearing his shocked gasp and a chuckle, quiet and rueful, followed her determined steps towards the door.

She abandoned him in that manner: without another word to him in explanation for her action. For that... that strangely intimate act. His long, pale hand rose slowly until shaking, potion-tainted fingertips pressed dazedly over the kiss-warmed skin and he smiled. Quietly. Beautifully and for a very long time...

TBC...


	11. Chapter 11

_**THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 11**_

He floundered as the lift lurched to a stop. Right hand curled, almost ferociously, against the wide metal bar that ran along the back of the claustrophobic muggle contraption.

His vague suspicion that he must look like a scarecrow was confirmed when he caught a fleeting look at his own reflection, flashing across the polished metal surface of the austere box.

He had turned into a terrible entity born from dark nightmares. A ghostly being, owner of a pale face that was tight with distress and sheer exhaustion. With anxious, utter terror. With absolute misery...

On his right Harry Potter stood solicitously, waiting patiently for him to regain his balance as he attempted to convince himself to uncurl his clenched fingers from the relative safety of that flat bar.

There was a soft, melodic "ping" when the contraption complained that the doors had remained opened for too long, but his rigidly-faced companion didn't even turn a hair as he stood there: ominously silent. Wide, tanned hand determinedly splayed across the doorway in order to lock the mechanism in it's current position.

With a deep, shuddering breath Severus forced his reluctant legs to take the single step forward that would, hopefully, kick-start all the rest. The strange shoes that he was wearing, so soft and light that they might as well had been mere socks, unbalanced him once more. He was used to his own boots, heavy things with wide soles and thickly warded leather. He was used to the feeling of his own footwear hugging the bony protrusions of his ankles as he walked and to the comforting weight of his tightly knitted socks shifting, with his every step, under the sturdy cloth of his serviceable woolen trousers. He was used to the balancing effect of his voluminous outer robes swishing gently around his limbs as he walked about, marking the subtle rhythm of his steps.

Now the lack of that familiar support felt simply... _alien._ Alien enough for him to stumble anew just as he'd finally managed to let go of the cold, wide metal bar.

Potter's arm shot towards him and he flinched, unconsciously scuttling backwards and earning a ferocious glare from the Head Auror:

"Relax, for goodness sake, Severus!. I'm only trying to steady you, all right?"

He gritted his teeth in absolute frustration, reminding himself harshly of the vow he'd given to the man: Public respect. Servile obedience. Submissive humiliation and isolating secrecy...

He had sworn on Draco's life, no less. It didn't actually matter that he'd been _tricked_ into doing so by this... _scoundrel. _The fact still remained that the oath had been both offered and accepted. It was now utterly binding, a perfect trap in which he'd been caught. One from which he could see no clear way out, at least not for now...

The reminder served to silence the cutting response that he'd been on the verge of delivering. He swallowed the poisonous words that he'd been about to utter and felt the bile of their demise rise in the back of his throat. His black eyes burned with the indignity of _conceding,_ but he was a man of his word even if he wasn't much else...

A curt nod of his head was all that he could manage as a way of apology, but it seemed to be enough. The green eyes softened so slightly that it could have very well been a trick of the awful light.

The pinging of the lift became more urgent, an irritatingly rhythmic reminder of their need to move away from their current position, but they both ignored it.

The silence that grew between them was so _strange... _It had some sort of expectant, breathless quality to it. It seemed to become... almost suspended in eternity as they looked into each other's eyes without ever moving a muscle. Severus was thoroughly uncomfortable with it. Unsure of what it was, exactly, that Potter waited for and utterly reluctant to step forwards himself. To move past the auror: out, into the shadowed hallway beyond...

Swallowing the thick knot of sheer unease that was threatening to choke him he shifted his head minutely to the left, their gazes lost their hold on one another and whatever link had held the child so still broke with a blink.

Potter's free arm rose towards him again and a hand that was blessed with callused fingers settled firmly around his good elbow. There was a compressed, almost challenging cast to the thin, pink slash that the man's mouth had become and a glint that was cold and hard and emerald in color shone from eyes that looked so startlingly unlike Lily's that, for the first time in his memory, he was unable to link mother and son inside his mind.

"I don't know _why_ you are so unbalanced this morning. You are struggling to remain upright and you can't _see_ that you don't have to do any of it alone, not while I am here!. I'll support you until we reach the apartment. You'll be able to rest then, Severus. There's no reason for you to fear my touch, I promise!"

The implication that he feared the brat, in any shape or form, rose his hackles and he struggled with his temper. He had to swallow a retort, so cutting, that it slashed his own throat to ribbons when it remained unvoiced.

The unwelcome digits curled around him tightly once again, pulling his body forwards into a small and wobbly step. His own hand was forced to abandon the cold safety of the lift's metal bar and his whole frame lurched inelegantly behind Potter's.

He was embarrassed at the indignity of the situation. At the utter humiliation of finding himself thus: tethered to the man who'd so cruelly slaved him, like a dog on a leash...

The moment they stepped out of the lift it's metal doors closed and a long corridor, bathed in the soft, amber-colored light that was coming from those odd little bulbs that the muggles had developed, extended before them in both directions. There were doors here and there, breaking the bland monotony of the horribly beige walls. The carpet under his feet was thick enough to bury half the sole of his odd shoes, but it was as horribly _soulless_ as the rest of the strange hall. It was a soft cream-like color that allowed the eye to drift, offering no focus and no challenge to it.

There was nothing on the walls either, be it painting or hanging of any kind, and the curtains that so elegantly covered the distant windows at the end of the passage were a plain, uninspiring white.

Potter moved to the right and he just... followed, elbow burning under the touch of foreign fingers. They shuffled slowly forwards until his companion halted before a door that in no way looked different from any other: -68B- it read in curling, metallic numbers and he assumed that these golden plates were the only identifying detail that separated one ghastly, insipid doorway from the next.

Potter's hand slid away from him as the creature searched, in one of the multiple pockets of his odd attire, for a short and flat looking key. A moment later the door swung open to reveal the utter emptiness of a foyer that held... not a thing. Not even a coat peg...

The auror entered the house, motioning him forward, and he swallowed his dismay as he followed that directive. The plain colored wood swung closed behind him with the soft swish of devotedly oiled hinges and they crossed the small hallway towards what might had been, in any other place, the main living area...

He came to an abrupt halt and stood there as if rooted to the spot. Anxious tension rose steadily within him when his widened gaze settled on the sparsely decorated space. He was dismayed beyond words by the sudden and shocked flash of total comprehension that fleeted through his mind.

He'd once seen a place just like this one. The moment, buried under the weight of a million and one more important memories, had remained mainly forgotten all these years, but it re-surfaced now to offer him unnerving comprehension of what he saw:

Under the bright morning light coming in from the wide windows he could see that the whole room was mostly empty with the exception of a wide couch. The supple leather upholstery was dark in color. It looked soft and yielding. Obviously selected for the clear air of indulgent comfort that it projected...

A fireplace that was unlit, but already prepared to hold a warm blaze, occupied a good portion of the wall opposite the sofa. The thick rug that covered the expanse of gleaming floor, between the hearth and the couch, looked deep enough to bury a body in it... A square table, small and carefully set by the right arm of the seat, held every kind of alcoholic bottle he'd ever seen and, disturbingly, about a dozen more that he hadn't...

It was no effort whatsoever for him to imagine the scene as it unfolded just, like the one he'd been so naively trusted into on that distant June evening, almost a lifetime ago... Back when Regulus Black had managed to get a mixed bunch of his sixth and fifth year slytherin class-mates, past the formidable wards of Hogwarts and into his elder brother's little place near Hogsmeade. They had all laughed so hard at Sirius Black's one-track mind, which had been so very clearly revealed by the obvious nature of the furniture that he'd chosen to decorate his _bird's_ _nest..._ For a fleeting moment Severus had allowed himself to relax. To enjoy the novelty of ridiculing his enemy among friends and smile widely. But the moment had been fleeting, bitter-sweet...

It'd been Aloysius Knot the one to start it, suggesting that they besmirch the Gryffindor's whore love-nest with some loving of their own... He'd been shocked when his classmates fell one upon another like beasts more fit for the forests than the civility of walls and ceiling. Clothes had already begun to be discarded by the time he'd shot to his feet, as if poked with a rod, and stepped backwards. Barely avoiding becoming embroiled in the disgusting embrace of a three-men lust-knot... He'd stood there: widened black eyes aghast, uncertain, as the bodies of his classmates were revealed to his utterly revolted gaze. Naked limbs slowly entwining with one another, in frenzied sharing of what should _never_ be given to another without love...

He remembered to this day the nausea that had risen in his throat. Recalled the sickening hammering of his own pulse beating wildly inside his chest as his eyes lifted. It had been then that he'd crossed the last genuine look he'd ever share with Regulus Black. His host had been staring straight at him from the other side of the sofa. A desperate, strangely feverish look darkened those enormous blue eyes and, although he'd never managed to understand the significance of that look, the truth was that he'd never managed to forget it, either. There had been something akin to sorrow in Black's eyes, something that had looked so much like desperate despair that he'd been _haunted_ by that look for a long time...

"Severus, are you all right?. You look a bit... _pale_"

The sound, hesitant as it was, pulled his mind away from those... best forgotten... memories and he returned to the present room that was so similar, in many ways, to the one of the past... His whole body stiffened as that comparison finally took root in his mind and he understood that Potter's much-talked-about muggle apartment was, in fact, the man's little den of... _sexual_ _indulgence..._ and, just like so long ago, he shuddered with distaste.

"I can't possibly stay here!" His voice exploded with the force of a thunderclap in the echoing emptiness of the place and his companion, who'd seemed so far content enough with staring at him gormlessly, while following his every move with his hands buried in the pockets of those _awful_ muggle _jeans_ that he was wearing, shot him a clearly affronted look before demanding:

"Why not?"

Horrified black eyes surveyed the room once more, hopelessly attempting to convince their owner that he could be quite wrong about the place. But he saw _nothing_ to dissuade him from the idea that he was, in fact, probably standing on the very same spot where all the tarts his companion had cared to bed over the years had once stood. The notion sickened him to his very depths and his brow furrowed in thunderous displeasure.

"This is your..." His voice halted as his throat closed on the words. His thin face flushed in embarrassment as he warred with the awful feeling of being... totally _filthy,_ that was turning his skin clammy with sweat. He could not say the words aloud... He. Would. Not. Say. Them!.

If that was Potter's intention then he feared that he'd failed the bloody man miserably at the very first hurdle. He could take many forms of humiliation, but to be forced to _acknowledge_ any kind of... _depravity_ of the flesh... was simply too much to bear. He could not cope with such a thing. Not from Lily's son, at least!. Not from anyone, really, for that matter.

Potter's eyes turned almost feral as the silence stretched and the jerk didn't even bother to control the obvious rage that tainted his voice when he demanded brutally:

"You are to answer my every question, Severus Snape!. Wizard's Vow and all that... Don't you remember?. And you better do so as truthfully as you can!"

He felt like dying with abject humiliation at the barked reminder. Awful weakness slowly spread through his shivering, cold limbs as his tongue froze.

"Well? "

The furious Head Auror confronted him harshly. His very posture a mirror of seething fury about to be unleashed over Severus' own head with the little bastard's very next breath.

Midnight-black eyes fixed on the dark couch as he forced his rigid throat to gasp out his response haltingly:

"This seems to be a very... _private..._ dwelling. It has... _indulgence..._ written all over it. This is _not_ the kind of place a man should share with his worst _enemy_"

A startled bark of bitter laughter followed his embarrassed explanation. He refused to look up when he felt the abrasive look from those emerald eyes burn the side of his face.

"You are _offended_ because I _shag_ here?" The brutality of that question sent him reeling and his eyes widened impossibly, rising to stare with appalled horror at the man across from him. That Potter lacked the kind of decorum that would render such a topic unsuitable to be spoken of in any kind of polite company surprised him so much that he just... _gaped. _The auror's amusement seemed to increase ten-fold in the face of his own flushed discomfort.

"I am _not_ in the habit of being _confronted_ with anyone's private affairs, Auror Potter" He snapped defensively and was totally disconcerted by the abrupt softening in the other man's demeanor.

"_That_ I can imagine, Severus. I have never, in all my years, encountered a man as... reluctant... to engage in any kind of intimacy as you are"

His throat dried even as he flushed with discomfited embarrassment. He didn't know how to take that observation, couldn't respond to it in any other way than attempting to ignore it had ever been made and, therefore, found himself in the uncomfortable position of being the first to avert his gaze. The action felt like a concession that he had not wanted to make, like a _defeat_ of some sort. Like _humiliation..._

Silence grew. It stretched between them like a cold shadow. He did not know how to break it... so he stood there, rooted to the spot, as his legs slowly weakened. His back hurt with the strain of rigidly maintaining the illusion of dignified strength that he was so adamant to project.

"Severus?"

Potter's voice reached him suddenly. A gentle uttering of his own name that, for some reason, made him feel lonely. He missed Albus and Luc. He missed Draco... Surely even he, himself, deserved the company of a friendly face while recovering from grievous injury. While lacking the comforting pulse of his own magic. While mourning for the things gone out of reach, maybe forever...

"Severus? "

The tone became even softer and he swallowed the lump that had lodged in his throat, thoroughly appalled at his utterly maudlin reaction to that soothing, but fake, gentleness...

"I do not require false care, Mr. Potter!" He gritted out at last. Onyx gaze pinning the bastard to the spot with such a hatred-filled look that the man's approach simply faltered.

For a second they both looked at one another with the same intense dislike that had, so long ago, defined their relationship as tutor and student. As Slytherin and Gryffindor. As never-truly-trusted-spy and precious Saviour of the World... Then Potter's brilliant green gaze darkened under the weight of unfathomable emotions and he coked his head slightly, like a jungle predator lazily appraising the merits of abandoning it's rest in order to pursue unexpectedly spotted prey.

"Whoever said my care is false, Professor?. I'd have to be pretty cold-blooded to feel any kind of indifference for the man who risked so much of his soul, of himself, to keep me alive and whole for seven years!"

His breath hitched as the man neared him. A hand dared to close around his elbow again, in a grip that proved to be as firm as a brick, and simply... pulled. His traitorous legs went ahead and _followed. _Stumbled really, as he was so disrespectfully _dragged_ towards the couch.

"You look about ready to collapse, you foolish man!. Haven't got the good sense of letting go, just... sit_,_ all right?. I promise you that we'll fight over anything you want the moment you feel better.."

"What on Earth do you _think_ you are doing?" He spluttered with incensed indignation when he felt himself being unceremoniously pushed down into the seat.

Potter shrugged as he stood there: towering over him and looking... _lost._

"I want you to get better. I need you to!. I've waited far too long for you to just... wake up, Severus. Seeing you so weak, and so reluctant to ask for help, is truly hard!. Too hard... I... I just... I don't _want_ to play this stupid game of ours any more. I want to... er... call for a truce"

Severus blinked with astonishment as the most awful confusion clouded his every thought. He could not possibly fathom the man's plan, but then again Gryffindors were notoriously tricky to understand. He'd never truly managed to do so and _that_ had been the root of much of the misery that he'd been forced to endure as a naive teenager. He was naive no longer, though. Hadn't been for quite some time and he'd be _dammed_ before he _allowed_ another petty Potter to _mess_ with him again!.

"I am afraid that any sort of peace between us is quite unachievable, Auror Potter. Even if I were remotely inclined to try my hand at such a thing: Which. I. Am. Not, we shouldn't forget that you actually _detest_ me!. I am here because your hatred of me is so _poisonous_ that you've decided to circumvent the justice of the Wizarding World itself in order to impose your own over my person. Do not forget that you have used the potion of choice of every swindler, thief and charlatan there is to trick me maliciously into _slavery!_. You are my _enemy,_ Mr. Potter. My most despised foe. The dark and awful creature that has dared threaten Draco... and I. Shall. Not. _Ever._ Willingly. Offer. You. Peace!"

Potter sucked in a breath and flailed like a landed fish. He seemed sickened beyond endurance. Utterly aghast by the perfect truth of his bold statement and Severus thought, with no small amount of satisfaction, that the ridiculous jerk had never truly understood the most important thing about slytherins: none of them truly feared confrontation. None of them could be called simply a coward and then be as easily forgotten as yesterday's trash. To do so could bring disaster upon those who were stupid enough to even try it.

A slytherin's first weapon of choice would always be diplomacy, of course. It made perfect sense to every single one of them, after all. They didn't just want to win, no. They wanted to do so forging new friendships, new acquaintances, new contacts. They wanted the kind of power that no man would ever offer to their enemy. Sometimes, though, diplomacy would go... _nowhere._ It could achieve no _benefit _and only serve to muddle the otherwise clearly-drawn lines of battle. When that happened there was no one that they would shy away from confronting, as viciously as they possibly could, in order to protect themselves and their loved ones from harm.

A slytherin with not-a-thing-to-lose was nothing less than a very cunning Gryffindor gone wild. A pissed off Ravenclaw standing just outside a burned library. A cornered Hufflepuff determined to stand, until the very end of time, between his weakened family and his blood-thirsty enemies.

They did have some things that were only theirs, though. Things that no other house at Hogwarts had ever truly appreciated: they knew loyalty to one another. They knew how to lay in wait for the most auspicious time to strike and, when they finally did so, it was always with deathly intent, because they also understood that there's nothing in the world more dangerous than a wounded enemy left alive to seek revenge. But, even more crucially, they understood the importance of unbreakable commitment while fighting. Once a Slytherin decided to engage in battle they might not to _participate_ in every skirmish, not bother retaliating every humiliating attempt to strike them down. They might even _lose_ more battles than they won, but... They all understood that a war is a thing that takes _years._ And strength. And stubbornness. And that, when your enemy has grown weary of all the fight or he's squandered his resources and has no more of... _anything..._ to use against you then, if you have either the fortitude or the strength to raise back up. If you make sure to be the one man left still standing at the very end of it all, then you have every right in the world to claim fair victory. Regardless of how much actual damage you've caused in either, blood or tears, to your enemy...

He'd fought Black and he'd fought the aurors. He'd fought Death Eaters. And his father. And Lily... He'd fought _Voldermort_ himself from his own hidden position, among shadows... Harry Potter was, maybe, his weakest enemy. For he was easily riled. He was _impatient_ and _capricious._ He had no real staying power, at least not in battle. He liked to give up, unless he found himself truly corralled and he could be very easily manipulated into guilt, if one was careful enough. Severus _knew_ without a shadow of doubt that he would find freedom from this awful situation one of these days. He had only to remain firm, wait the brat out while giving away _nothing_ of himself. Nothing that he didn't had to offer under the letter of their vow, that is.

"I don't think it's very wise of you to lock horns with me over this issue, Professor. The way I see it, if I _want_ to have a truce then I get to have it. Don't I?. Don't forget the terms of our oath: I am the one calling all the shots here and you are... You. Are... _Not!"_

Although the words were firm and challenging, in and of themselves, the tone the boy had used was quite weak. There was a bruised quality to his emerald gaze that made him look pained. He was pale and trembling. He was breathing harshly, like a child about to explode into a storm of crying. Severus did not bother to respond to that utterly unimpressive bravado in any shape or form, he had promised the menace his respect, after all. A deep sigh broke from his chest and his head turned. Cold, black eyes raked the room in the growing silence.

Potter stiffened as the moment stretched. Taught frame rigid with obvious affront and ever-growing frustration. Severus waited, perversely entertained, for the fireworks that could so easily be caused by that hair-triggered temper to start in earnest. The brat's leg jiggled in place, weight was shifted from left to right in a strange dance that revealed a deep well of untold anxious energy. Then he wrecked havoc in that horrid mop of his when he tangled restless fingers through his short, ink colored locks.

"I don't _want_ to fight with you, Severus" The boy finally released that statement in a short, savage whisper. Angry green eyes flashed darkly as they settled over his own seated form in a storm of fierce frustration.

"As you wish, Auror Potter" His own offering was neutrally voiced. Respectfully given. A work of art in restrained emotion and utter, absolute indifference. He was counting on it to rile the little ignorant to the point of storming off.

The boy's features became mulish. Obstinate determination flashed verdant-tipped daggers from those eyes, a snort exploded from angrily widened nostrils and the dark head shock once. Twice.

"Are you hungry?. You didn't touch your lunch at all, I was watching..."

The abrupt change in mood and topic threw him and he blinked in absolute bewilderment before the meaning of the words truly sank in. Then he frowned his derision and a single black eyebrow rose incredulously:

"Are you attempting to convince me that there is food _here?"_

The boy flushed and his stubborn emerald gaze lowered self-consciously towards the floor for a brief second. A shoe rubbed onto the side of it's twin, in a strangely coy motion.

"We could always go out, you know? There's a small Indian place down the corner, I think. Do you even like Indian food?"

The idea of walking, dressed in these... dreadfully _thin_ muggle garments... wobbling down the road like some kind of aged, drunken pet, thoughtlessly _tethered_ to the miscreant before him made him shiver.

"I'd rather not"

The smile that came his way then was soft and gentle.

"Of course not, I bet you are tired. Why don't you lay down for a little while?. It'll do you plenty of good, you know?. Laura said you should rest as much as you could, at least for the first few days"

Determined steps brought the little menace closer before he could think of something -_anything-_ to say that could indicate, in as respectfully a manner as he could possibly stomach, just how very _disinclined_ he was to... _obey..._ that particular request. His eyes widened and his breath halted when the boy knelt before him, without so much as a by-your-leave, and proceeded to _seize_ his left foot rudely. Golden fingers curled around his thin calf and the very strange shoe that he'd been wearing was skilfully pulled off.

"Do you want to keep the socks?"

He nodded jerkily in hasty agreement, all but yanking his limb off the auror's grasp before the man could even _think_ of removing the flimsy dark-colored covering. A sly chuckle rent the air and his every muscle stiffened with the humiliation of having become the loathsome creature's laughing stock. The fingers froze on his leg in a disconcertingly immediate reaction to his own obvious discomfort.

There was a heartbeat of silence...

Then those eyes that looked so much like Lily's lifted to clash with his own in a head-on collision.

"I don't know _how_ to ease these misgivings of yours, Severus. I only know that I am _trying_ not to upset you in any way, but... It's. Just. Not. Working!. You need to relax a bit, O.K?. I'll just... I'll pull off your other shoe and let you sleep"

His own features wore a mask of painful civility and his gritted tone became a fierce reflection of the absolutely livid dismay that was coursing through his every vein:

"I can remove my own footwear, thank you very much."

Potter bristled, his jaw clenched and a hand that was truly as strong as iron held his other foot aloft.

"You can barely _function_ with that broken arm of yours. Having to force myself to stay on the other side of that hospital-bed curtain was just _awful!_. I had to grit my teeth and listen to you _trying_ to dress yourself, in extremely unfamiliar clothing, I might add, when it was patently clear that you could _not_ cope with the task. But your precious Draco wasn't there to fuss All. Over. You!, was he? And I'm not _good_ _enough_ a substitute for him. Not in your eyes, at least. I was _dying_ to _help_ you!. You stubborn, idiotic... BONEHEAD!. But, no. Oh, No!. Never let it be said that the Great-Git-Severus-Snape lowered himself to ask Harry Potter for help, not when he could force himself to struggle RIGHT INTO A BLOODY COLLAPSE!"

By the end of that absolutely thunderous diatribe Potter had been fairly screaming his guts off. Severus blinked in affronted, flustered uncertainty, but he could think of nothing to say or do other than just... _blink _some more_!._

The boy's lips thinned with anger, emerald eyes clearly struggling with a truly impressive riot of emotions of all kinds. There was anger and there was rage. Frustration. Pity. Regret. Hurt... There was a truly distressing chaos of virtually every feeling the human heart can hold swirling within those soulful verdant pools and Severus fully understood, to his everlasting shame, that he _lacked_ the necessary courage to delve into that miasma for more than just a second, so his own gaze simply... lowered towards the floor.

His other shoe was removed in a stony, hardened silence. His foot was cradled for a second too long within those callused wide hands, but he couldn't bring himself to raise his eyes from the suddenly enthralling sight of the black woolen cloth that covered his knees...

Potter sighed softly into the heavy silence before setting the limb free. A heartbeat turned into a few as the man remained there: kneeling patiently at his feet. Upturned face studying his own intently. Fiery green eyes attempting to clash with his... Silence stretched but time itself seemed to have come to an abrupt halt. There was nothing in the world but the awful calmness that enfolded them within the moment, like a shroud. Then the boy became bold and a hand that was gentle, but confident, settled over his skinny right knee with astonishing aplomb. It entered his line of sight and forced him to acknowledge the hand's owner.

"It will be all right, Severus. Things will settle between us, you'll see... Now you sleep and I'll go get some food for later. That'll be all we do today, OK?. Nothing less. Nothing more... At least not until you learn for yourself that life it's not so frightening when we live it just like this: taking every day only a step further, Professor. Only one, you see?. One little step at a time..."

TBC...


	12. Chapter 12

**THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 12 **

The place was quiet. So utterly, deafeningly silent that he fancied it to be abandoned altogether.

He'd woken about an hour ago, black eyes popping open with the startled anxiety of the frightened. But there had been no danger. No reason at all to fear the empty walls, the empty room, the empty... _everything... _Beige assaulted his reeling senses like a weapon. It _offended_ him with it's blandness, c_hallenged_ him to find -if he could- the most minute, insignificant clue about the true personality of the flat's owner amid all this... _nothingness._

Someone... No. Not _someone,_ it could have only been Potter after all, had placed a thick pillow under his head. A soft butter-cream colored fleece had been carefully tucked around him. It felt somewhat invasive to discover that he'd been... _managed..._ by the brat while he slept. He was still on the sofa and his odd clothes were still there. All of them, right down to the flimsy socks, but he could not shake off the notion that he'd been... put to sleep like a young child...

He felt rested, though, and quite hungry. The light that was filtering in through the pale curtains indicated that he must have slept all evening and all night... He was loath to abandon his safe, yellow cocoon. This place of warmth and silence that he'd found himself inhabiting this morning. So he stayed were he was and studied the awful walls, wondering idly why was it that they were so... _empty._ Why was it that the frighteningly _intense_ creature that Potter seemed to have grown into had ended up _here,_ in this... _blank_ _canvas._ Trapped within walls and ceilings that held no life whatsoever.

He missed the busy bustle of his hospital room. Missed the comforting presence of the staff as they went about their duties just outside his door. He _craved_ the simple certainty of knowing exactly when the next meal would arrive, when the next potion.

He missed the fact that Draco and Luc, or even Minnie had been able to push open the door and come to visit at any time. He wondered if Potter would allow the Malfoys to come here. Attempted to imagine what possible excuse the boy could use to convince them to stay away and felt somewhat relieved by his own conclusion that there was _no_ _way_ that Luc wouldn't be able to _see_ past the auror's tricks.

Soft footsteps echoed suddenly down the corridor. The muted sound of barefooted feet trying to be quiet, as they carefully traveled over miles and miles of carpet, reached him clearly. For a second he was tempted to play dead, close his eyes and let the menace think him asleep... Then his empty stomach growled and he sighed. He'd have to confront the jerk sometime, start this new and strange life of his and see where it'd lead him...

"You are awake..."

The words were whispered in the quiet. They sounded soft and dazed, as if imbued by their speaker with the same wonder that he'd grant a full-blown miracle.

Potter had come to a standstill by the arched entryway to the main living area.

He wore nothing but a disreputable pair of faded red pajama pants. His bare chest was indecorously exposed and his jaw was shadowed with the kind of inky stubble that made him look... well, far too _relaxed._ Severus himself felt mortifyingly embarrassed. Unused, as he was, to dealing with the presence of anyone who'd so carelessly parade around in such indecently _improper_ state of undress.

The boy, though, was obviously at ease. He was waiting for some sort of answer to his greeting, gaze firmly fixed upon him with a look that made those soft, green eyes shine like jewels.

"Yes. I... It seems I've slept the whole night away. I'm sorry"

Wild dark hair wobbled all around the young golden features that were breaking into a smile and a fond expression lit up the unfamiliarly mature visage of the boy he'd once taught.

"I suspect you needed the rest, Severus. It's not as if there are urgent matters for you to attend to, in any case. Now... I was going to make myself some coffee. Would you care for a cup?"

"Coffee?" His nose wrinkled in distaste as the name of that awful beverage abandoned his pursed lips. He could not help the dismayed reaction to that most unwelcome offering and was utterly disconcerted by the laughter it provoked.

Potter neared him with that new grace that he'd acquired at some point in recent years, a small shrug of his wide shoulders and another gruff-toned chuckle accompanied his approach as his legs easily devoured the space that separated them.

"You are just like old Malfoy, I see. He told me so himself, of course, but I hoped that you wouldn't turn out to be as kin on the boiled water as he is. Are you also going to explode into an ode for the wonderful _englishness_ of a finely brewed cup of tea?"

Severus froze at the casualness of this... this strange _conversation_ they were having. He was not used to being... _teased._.. by anyone. Least of all first thing in the morning by a half-dressed _enemy_.

He could certainly imagine Luc whining about the coffee and the image brought him both comfort and longing. He wished his friend was here to guide him through the confusing uncertainty of his new situation. Step into the breach, whenever his own feet faltered, and see him reach safe harbor...

Luc had always excelled at social adaptation. He understood without much prompting all the mysterious cues that Severus himself missed and was always the one to take the lead, whenever they'd been required to navigate through the sometimes dangerous territory that another's expectations could become. Whether the expectations in question had been those of a ministry toady, a foreign diplomat or the Dark Lord himself, Luc had always, _always_, managed to bring them back out alive...

"Severus?"

Potter had knelt beside the sofa, while he wrestled with his thoughts, and now all that positively _indecent_ amount of bare chest was far too close for his comfort.

Dark eyes clashed with quiet green and they both reeled. There was utter, fierce, sheer tenderness within that achingly similar copy of Lily's verdant gaze...

"Do you _want_ tea, then?"A hand rose up to his face and his long, black hair was gently held before being looped, lazily, around a tanned index finger while the boy idly searched his increasingly discomfited expression:

"I have plenty of it, I promise. It's about the only thing that's actually ready, you see?. Malfoy was most insistent about the tea."

Severus didn't _want_ to play whatever game the child thought he was playing. He swung his legs off the sofa, almost kicking the miscreant right in the shoulder, and the auror was just... _forced._.. to let go of his hair.

Potter scuttled backwards hastily, holding his body away from the blandly colored carpet with one hand splayed on the floor, behind himself. He ended up half laying at the foot of the seat, with both knees bent upwards and his chest exposed, gazing up with bright green eyes that were suddenly alive with playful mirth...

The position was somewhat open and intimate. An unguarded, trusting half-fall that left him exposed to Severus' own intentions. He could kick the boy flat to the floor with very little effort, after all. Push his sock-covered foot against that chest, then move it upwards to crush the exposed throat under his heel...

"I take it you don't want the tea, either?. You could have said, you know?. There's no need to throw me down on to the floor and... _loom..._ like that all over me. I'll give you whatever you want, Severus, as soon as you ask for it"

He blinked at the words. The violence of his own thoughts simply... _dissolved._.. under the bewilderingly inappropriate _insinuations_ that, for a second of utter madness, he was actually convinced laid beneath the auror's rather mundane complaint. He was so stressed by the unusual situation that he could not even _think_ of a response. His eyes clashed, once again, with the brat's own. Ebony depths flashing with sheer panic before he decided to raise blindly from the seat and just... stood there: protective ward flashing blue warnings all along his left arm. Long hair tangled and dark eyes widened with a frantic and terrible anxiety. He began to search wildly for a route back towards safety, desperately trying to _ignore_ the convoluted mess of echoing thoughts that screamed unformed warnings within his mind...

"Severus?"

Potter rose so fast, so effortlessly, that he took a startled step sideways, keeping the auror at arm-length while his dark eyes shot all around the room in search of something that could help him escape, but they found nothing. Because there was nothing, _nothing,_ here... The whole place was beige and empty. A black hole mercilessly filled with the absence of everything that could have so easily turned these four walls into a home. It was devoid of both lamps and heavy decorations, of flower vases or a fire poker... Devoid, even, of the blasted child's broom!. There was _nothing_ here that he could wield as a weapon. Nothing that could be of any help to him at all...

"The bathroom is down the corridor" Surprisingly, it was the boy himself who came to his rescue with a strange, flattened tone. "Third door on the left, Severus"

He did not even bother to offer his thanks. He was so... _unnerved_. So... _unraveled_ that he all but _ran_ out of the room, feeling all the while as if the Dark Lord himself, or even worse: Nagini, were pursuing him with murderous intent. He found the right door with no effort and dove into the all-white, luxurious but bland refuge that it offered him. The door bolted closed behind him and he sagged, utterly drained of energy, against the clear colored wood...

Time lost all sense of meaning for a moment. He was not aware of it as it crawled away from him while he rested, utterly immobile, against the grounding presence of that firmly closed door.

Then the strong smell of coffee reached his nostrils. Onyx eyes shot open to stare straight ahead as the awareness that his reprieve, _this_ _reprieve_, was coming to an end fleeted through his mind.

Another heartbeat or two fluttered away before he found within himself strength enough to separate his rigidly held body from the comfort of the securely bolted door.

He used the facilities slowly, every task was stretched to it's limits as he struggled with the disheartening proposition of returning back to Potter.

Finally his hands were washed to new levels of unsullied perfection, almost polished right off their very skin by his own frantic efforts. His face had been splashed with the welcoming coldness of the most frigid water that the elegant spigot could produce and his hair, black and tangled, had been rigidly finger-combed into the kind of submission that so often brought him comfort.

The mirror before him showed the disheartening image of his own ragged visage and he stared, aghast with utter sorrow, at the picture he presented to the world. He was ugly like black sin and thin like a wire. Ghostly pale and almost gaunt, with a veritable curtain of long and inky hair... He looked like the specter of a specter. A hellish monster: all tired dark eyes and tightened pale lips that showed not a smidgen of joy. Of hope. Of life...

He grew weary of his own thoughts and fled the bathroom, forcing the pathetic apparition in the mirror to whirl away in a wobbly arch and disappear. He tried hard to forget that he'd ever seen it, dismissing it firmly to the very back of his mind with every step that he took away from it.

Back in the main room he followed the faint echo of china being banged here and there. Of a drawer being a tad too-forcefully opened. Of loose cutlery being jostled about savagely...

Potter made beverages in the mornings like he fought against Dark Lords. He did it resentfully. Efficiently. With a frightening attention to detail... There were both cream and sugar on the table. A plate with lemon wedges. A magnificent looking cutlery-set that appeared to have been made out of pure silver was resting grandly over a pristine and heavy napkin. There was a narrow, pearl colored cup perched atop a small delicate saucer. Curling wisps of pale steam rising from it...

There were scones on another plate, the smell of them filling the whole kitchen with a strangely homely aroma. Butter waited next to them, right beside an unopened jar of strawberry jam. He wondered if it was mere coincidence or if Potter actually _knew_ that he liked that particular flavor of preserve, that particular brand...

Green eyes settled over his own features with the intensity of a scientist. Whatever the man sought to find within them, obviously absent, as the very next thing to scape from the auror's lips was a disheartened sigh. Strong fingers curled around a wide mug decorated with the most awful, headache-inducing, swirly pattern that Severus had ever seen outside of Albus' own robes. Lean hips settled against the worktop that ran all around the far end of the room and a stubbed chin was pointed towards the fussily set table in a curt expectant nod:

"Tea, Severus. Malfoy said you'd be happy enough with the scones when I fire-called him last night so... don't _try_ to leave them uneaten, just to spite me"

He stood frozen in the doorway, disbelieving dark eyes fixed on that table as the moment simply... stretched. He could not un-think the thought that it had been set for a king. The carefully displayed breakfast seemed more befitting the Minister of Magic, or even a Malfoy than his own uninspiring self...

"Severus?. The tea is getting cold, you know?"

There had been irritated frustration in the voice that called him, a growled quality to it that betrayed a thinly-veiled anger. Potter's knuckles were white around the handle of his tightly held mug and his eyes, those green eyes, were flashing with annoyance.

He frowned at the tone. At the lack of... patience. At the very strong _hint_ of deep displeasure that it was so obviously displaying, but he dared not say a word about it.

He was wary of the boy's odd... _mood swings_. Weary of the utterly bewildering ease with which Potter could, sometimes, ensnare his own unsettled senses, trap him within the unwelcome miasma of the disconcertingly... intense... emotions that so often swirled within his eyes. He wanted no part of them. Wanted no part of this _inexplicable_ anger, either, and he _knew_ that they'd find themselves embroiled in the most damaging kind of rage-filled argument, if he even _dared_ to call the little jerk on the irrational nature of the unprovoked anger that he was displaying. So he swallowed his own sharp retort with crippling difficulty and entered the room reluctantly.

His thin, long fingers curled around the back of a small and utilitarian dining chair, pulling it away from the table. The resulting screech of wooden legs against ceramic floor was cringe-worthy and his cheeks flushed with the embarrassment of the ungraceful. His black eyes fluttered upwards to the face of the young auror and the expression he saw there unnerved him even further...

"Will you calm yourself down already?. I don't even _know_ what I did back there to spook you that badly, but you've got to relax. Get it into your head that I'M NOT ACTUALLY DOING ANYTHING TO YOU, FOR MERLIN'S SAKE!"

That unjust remonstration rent the air in a frustrated little hiss that rose his hackles. He forgot his good intentions in the blink of an eye, temper flaring to burning point at the indignity of being told off by the little menace.

"Then I'd be grateful if you stop glaring menacingly at me Every. Bloody. Second. That. I. Am. _Forced._ To. Endure. Your. Company, Auror Potter! "

The respectful side of their thrice-dammed-vow was perilously in danger of being blown into smithereens within the first twenty-four hours of their doomed co-habitation, no less. He was now forced to stare straight into the ghastly face of the kind of failure that cast _terrible_ _aspersions_ over his own ability to control himself. Over his mastery his own temper. Over his _ownership _of the totality of his own thoughts and desires.

He was a man of his word, for goodness sake!. And the idea, the very _intimation_ that he'd fail so abysmally at something that required nothing from him but _self-restraint_ frayed his already strained nerves to the point of shamed disillusion.

Potter was livid with rage. His eyes flashed and his shoulders shook under the shirt that he must have donned on while Severus himself had been in the bathroom. The expression that was adding thunderous shadows to the youth's rigid features was frightening indeed.

The coffee mug crashed down on to the counter with a loud, ominous thud and Severus' body turned to stone as he stood rooted to the very spot like a lifeless wax figurine...

Widened dark eyes followed the slow curl of those golden fingers against the boy's wide palms. To his utmost dismay a set of perfectly threatening fists began to form before his very eyes. They were strong, white-knuckled _weapons_ that could so easily break him... His thoughts turned then to his mother: so fragile and frightened a woman, so softly spoken and pathetic... The distant memory of a dully-eyed female who used to remain almost always still, to the point of becoming completely unnoticeable fleeted through his mind. She had been nothing short of a despondent, defeated shadow. The very epitome of all those things that he'd always tried so very hard to avoid becoming...

Potter's rage seemed to freeze between one blink and the next. His body suddenly sagged back, against the counter, as if drained of all energy.

"Don't look at me like that, Severus!"

He just _reeled._ He could not _understand_ that request. But there was something so awfully like relief filling his whole mind with dizzying comfort that he could not even find a cutting response to the child's strange command. He collapsed onto the chair in a pile of weakened limbs, elbows propped on the table and hands supporting his whole head as he just... _breathed_...

Footsteps echoed in the room. Potter's approach was as unwelcome as it was inevitable. A hand settled over his shoulder and he flinched, tanned fingers curled gently over the dark cloth of the uncomfortably thin shirt that he was wearing.

"If it'll make you feel better I'll confess that I'm sorry for this, Severus. I think... I'm on edge, and I... I'm feeling unusually defensive today, you see?. I'm actually nervous enough to barf!"

That last comment brought him right out of his tense rigidity with a sharp and horrified reproof:

"Potter!"

The auror chuckled and that disturbingly too-warm palm was pulled finally away from his shoulder when the man looped a hand over the backrest of the nearest chair and, bringing it closer with a sharp

tug, proceeded to sit on it, a hair's breath away from Severus' own position.

"Hermione would say that I am "_projecting._" But the truth is that I seem to be ruining absolutely EVERYTHING... and I don't even know how!"

Agitation was clear in every syllable of that totally aggravated sentence and Severus wondered what it was, exactly, that the boy wanted to hear. He had no clue as to what to say, anyway. Had precious little _inkling_ as to what the Hell was happening and even less interest in finding that out.

He wanted to retreat. At once, if possible. Hide somewhere far away and think for a long time. He craved the echoing silences of his old chambers. The ease of living by himself with no one to please. The utter simplicity of understanding completely the dark corners of his own mind and navigating his needs easily, freely. With the trouble-free comfort of his own company...

"The tea is cold" He decided to settle on that four-worded non sequitur. A simple but clear break from the awfully disconcerting conversation that they'd been sharing and his companion suddenly dissolved into a fit of giggles.

There was more than a little hysteria to the sound. There was sorrow-filled heartbreak and disappointment. There was a gruff, mirthless bitterness and a touch, only a touch, of genuine self-deprecation.

"The tea is cold..." His own words were repeated back to him in a soft-toned whisper and the apology that followed was even softer. Almost fragile. Heartbroken even: "I am sorry, Severus..."

The silence that followed seemed thick enough to be cut with a blunt knife. A full minute went by without either of them moving. Then Potter took a deep breath that seemed to galvanize him into sudden action. The delicate, pearl colored cup was seized and the auror rose once again. Four restless steps took him back towards the counter and he flicked on a button on the stainless-steel kettle that he must have used before. The soft rumble of heating water filled the silence and Severus still knew not what to say. Or do. Or even think, for that matter. The kettle stopped and the sink's spigot was manipulated into releasing a thick flow of clear water that Lily's child used to rinse the cup manually. He dried the thing manually, too...

-Because of me...- Severus' mind finally made the connection between the lack of magic in the brat's actions and the unfavorable way in which the ward that shielded his left arm reacted to it. He felt _humbled_ by the gesture and even more stressed...

His new beverage was brought back to the table and placed gently before him, like a strange offering.

The auror sat by his side once again, chair too close and thigh almost touching his own in an extremely discomfiting fashion.

"Let's try this again, Severus... Here, have your tea!." The words were intense and expectant. They were growled so close to his ear that he felt each one of them fall over the right side of his face like soft puffs of warmed air.

He picked up the cup with fingers that were visibly trembling and his teeth gritted with the effort not to scream at the miscreant to let him be. He detested the scrutiny of those green eyes. Was dismayed by the awareness that there was some kind of very strange... _undercurrent..._ between them. He was unnerved by that _unwelcome_ discovery. Utterly uncomfortable and, at the very same time, absolutely floored. He could not _understand_ what the Hell was happening here and the whole situation was so fraught with tension that it set his nerves on edge.

The first sip was just too hot and burned his tongue, but he forced himself to swallow. To lower the cup back on to it's saucer and just... Take. A. Very. Deep. Breath.

A whole universe of tension settled within his constricted chest in the ensuing thick silence... After a second or two he forced himself to turn his head minutely towards the menace. Coerced the rigid muscles of his face to abandon the wary expression that they held and embrace once more his trusty mask of polite neutrality. Then, to top it all of, he inflicted upon his lips the unwanted chore of uttering, very... _respectfully,_ the same words that he'd have gladly offered to any person -other than this one, of course!- who'd given him tea:

"The brew is lovely. Thank you, Mr. Potter"

A soft chuckle was the impertinent brat's answer to his efforts and the scowl returned to his own face at once. With extra-force.

"I do not see what is so funny!"

The jerk giggled like a girl, of course. But still... _giggling_ at other people's _effort_ was utterly disrespectful!. Ebony colored eyes shot deadly daggers right into that disconcertingly mirth-filled visage. Potter blinked rather owlishly and smiled brightly at him. It was not the same kind of frigidly cold lift of one's lips that Severus himself used, when forced by circumstances to play the disgustingly incomprehensible games of polite social interaction. No. There was _nothing_ unwilling or polite or even half-way _forced_ to the auror's expression. It was obviously genuine and fond. A smile that could stop broom-traffic without effort. Delighted green fire flashed within a gaze that was far too bright:

"I bet that was hard for you. Harder than having to swallow poison might have been... _The brew is lovely,_ indeed. I bet your stomach just turned inside out from having to say such a thing, Professor. And to me, of all people!"

Severus stiffened in disgruntled outrage. He was absolutely incensed with the brat!. He was _trying_ to fulfill that blasted vow of theirs to the letter and the very thought of having his attempt at... _respect_... dismissed quite that blatantly burned him bitterly.

"There is no need to crow, Potter!. Let's agree on the point that I can see how my utter humiliation might delight you"

The boy shook his head slightly, brightness fading almost completely from those forest colored eyes.

"Humiliating you is not what this is about, Severus"

His snort was loud and clear in the otherwise silent room and Albus' pet looked right at him with a firm, determined intensity.

"Just because you don't believe me doesn't mean that I'm lying to you, you know?"

He didn't dare answer that. Their loathsome pact might suffer if he did. Salazar alone knew what might actually come out if he dared to open his mouth... and it was _Draco's_ _life_ they had sworn on.

Repressed indignation made him shudder and he lifted that fragile cup to his thin lips.

Taking a sip of the tea eased the moment. The need to offer the boy a fitting response became less urgent and he allowed himself to sigh inwardly.

Potter's restless hand found that awful, unruly hair of his and made it worse. Sheer frustration charged the room in the next blink and he waited for the explosion that was coming, only... it didn't come. Not at all. Not in any way...

He was left holding his tea, sipping it slowly, while that green gaze focused on his face as the silence simply grew. Never had he endured a breakfast as discomfiting as this one. A meal so... disturbingly uneasy... that it twisted his stomach into a knot. Finally the young lungs filled audibly with air, almost as if their owner found it difficult to breathe. Or calm himself. Or maybe both:

"Professor Mcgonagall's coming this evening. She said she needs to talk to you about the school. The Weasleys are coming too. For dinner. Everyone wanted to see you and this seemed the easiest way, you know?. One big bash with everybody present, instead of draining little visits one after the other..."

He blinked slowly and looked at the babbling creature with the kind of disbelieving bewilderment that he'd usually reserved for Albus' crazy plans. Valentine balls and all kinds of disgustingly... _cheerful_, little _celebrations_ had been an unfortunate weakness of the former headmaster.

"Dinner with the _Weasleys._..? A big _bash_?... What on Earth..."

Potter's index finger found the bridge of his nose and scratched at it madly.

"I thought it'd be less tiring for you, that's all. It's been hard keeping everyone away from St Mungo's. You were finally awake and the amount of people wanting to visit you was just... mind-boggling, but you were so weakened that Jones warned us against putting you through that kind of stress, all at once. So... I've been _trying_ to keep everyone away, at least until you were released"

He was forced to abandon his drink, lest he drop that beautiful cup and broke it into a million smithereens. His slender hands fell limply against his lap and curled defensively there: twin white fists of incredulous affront that he found hard to hide, at least completely.

"Are you _implying_ that YOU have been _monitoring_ MY visitors?" He _knew_ that his tone was hard. It was also cutting and displeased, but... By Salazar!, he was actually _displeased_. And outraged. He was mad enough to scream!. He was so absolutely livid with the high-handed attitude of the little jerk that he had to come to a stand or he'd have throttled the auror right there, in his own kitchen chair!.

Potter cottoned on to the danger that he was in fairly quickly. His whole body backed away the moment he saw Severus trying to stand up and a wary, defensive watchfulness turned his features into a rigidly held mask:

"I'm mostly certain that you didn't _want_ to deal with the delegate of the Quilting Association of Scotland, calling on you to ask for your permission to plaster your face on _all_ of their comforters for the next season, Severus!"

Sheer incredulity cooled his anger and he stood beside the table, as if frozen. A second turned slowly into another before his befuddled brain could even find a single word to offer in response to so ridiculous a claim:

"Why on Earth would ANYONE want to have _my_ face upon their beds?. It's... It's... It's utterly _preposterous!_"

Potter laughed, bright eyes hard enough to drill holes into the wall.

"You'd be surprised of the kind of things people want from you once they feel they have a right to idolize you"

He shuddered with distaste.

"This would be your handiwork then, auror Potter. No one in their right mind would have ever cared for me in such a disturbing way, if it hadn't been for your interference!"

They both glared at each other with sudden ferociousness, until the gryffindor shook his head with a defeated sigh:

"Why is it that we can't stop arguing, Severus?. I had such wonderful plans for your first day out of the hospital and now... Gosh!... Even serving your bloody tea turned into a battle!"

Reedy shoulders shrugged in a strained, uneasy motion.

"You can't be so blind as to fail to see that we are like oil and water, Mr. Potter. There was no other possibility for us but to engage in constant conflict. I was certain that _that_ had been your purpose all along..."

The boy shrugged almost violently, paling features alive with pained distress.

"My _purpose,_ as you so very delicately put it, was nothing of the kind!. I have spent the last four years of my life seating beside your bed. _Dreaming_ up scenarios of exactly what would happen when you finally woke up. Trust me, Severus, having you upset enough to smash my nose to a pulp was never even on the cards. But then again I am only just starting to find out how very different you really are from the man I dreamed up. You are far harder and so stubborn... It's just... absolutely _impossible_ to reach out to you!"

His jaw clenched in reaction to the dark growl in that voice.

"That's what happens to _dreams,_ Potter. You are so happy while you are having them that you forget that morning must, eventually, return. Then you wake up... I'm not a _toy_ you can play with!. I'm a human being, you see?. And I'm not _sorry_ that I've failed to entertain you, in whichever sickened way you've concocted. I'm _here. A_nd I'm _me_!. You'll get nothing else but _this!._ Why don't we _both_ learn to accept _that_ and move on before we kill one another?"

Silence settled between them like a smothering thick blanket. Potter looked right at him, green eyes shining like stars made out of moss:

"You are _assuming_ that I find the real you somehow... _lacking_, Severus!" He finally whispered, voice gone gruff with so much emotion that it sounded like thick gravel.

"I'll move on, of course. I'll have to. But the problem here is not the one you are seeing. You _want_ to fight, yes. But I _don't_ want to and we are clashing so hard because I find it difficult to deal with the fact that you don't see _me_ in the same way that I see _you"_

He was shocked right into speechlessness. He was trapped, once more, by the confusing vortex of feelings trying to reach out to him, trying to drown him. They were all there: blatantly displayed within the depths of this child's fierce eyes... Emotion swirled outwards from within that ever-darkening gaze and he shuddered from head to toe in bewildered reaction to it.

"I do _not_ _want_ to do this!" He exploded finally. Dark hair swung around his ghostly-white face when he turned his whole head away, pointedly dissociating himself from the confounding creature.

Potter's temper was equally roused and his face turned to stone. His tanned fingers curled in two mighty fists that he placed on the table. He stood then and inclined forwards over the gleaming wood to snarl straight into the side of Severus' head:

"I _know_ that you don't want to do any of this, Professor. But you'll _have_ to, you know?. Whether you decide to go along with me or you struggle to follow, I don't care!. You'll be forced, in the end, to confront _this._ I'll give you _patience _and I'll give you _time._ But I'm not letting it all go until you give me a proper hearing, so... to put your question back to you, Severus, why don't we _both_ learn to accept _that,_ too, and start with the moving on already?"...

TBC...


	13. Chapter 13

_**THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 13 **_

His eyes looked on as the boy struggled. Potter was sweating quite profusely and attempting to ignore the constant whine of the red-haired menace whom he called his best friend. They were engaged in gormless contemplation of a huge dining table and attempting to decide, to Severus unending amusement, which one of them should hold what and how best to bring the whole catastrophe of heavily ornamented oak in, through the front door, without the use of magic.

Weasley was all for a shrinking and levitating charm, after the third failed attempt, but Potter was vociferously resisting. Because the door had been left open while they argued ad nauseum over what to do people had started to stop whatever they'd been doing to approach the pair.

A fair amount of commotion was starting to wreak havoc in the former peace of the hallway as an ever-increasing crowd of Potter's muggle neighbors started to congregate outside the door.

He sighed to himself. His back ached and his arm pulsed with a constant thrum of discomfort. He was tired and out of sorts, and the infernal racket that they were so carelessly producing was slowly, but certainly, murdering what little amount of patience he had left.

His teeth gritted and he attempted, for the eleventh time that morning, to block out the noise around him and allow himself to... _drift..._ but it was no use. He was clearly on edge and he found himself unable to settle.

Potter and Weasley were conferring with a man who seemed to be some sort of manager for the building and a lot of nodding and ah-ing was going on out there. People peered around the door-jamb with the rude curiosity of the nosy and he found himself resenting their unwanted scrutiny of the dismally empty room. He was surprised to discover that he felt truly ashamed on the menace's behalf. To be so very... _obvious_ about both: his needs and lack of decorum was, to Severus' own mind, the very worst of indiscretions.

He felt nothing but embarrassed discomfort as he sat upon that sofa while a bunch of perfect strangers stared straight at him with all kinds of misconceptions clearly fleeting through their minds.

By the time someone advised the idiotic Gryffindor duo to hook the blasted table onto a rope and fling it in through the balcony windows, he had decided to make himself scarce.

He visited the bathroom and refreshed himself carefully. His clothes looked rumpled and odd to his own eyes, but he'd seen the outfits that the muggles who'd been gaping at him so rudely had been wearing and was reassured that he wouldn't look too strange among the lot. There was a comb by the sink and he used it carefully. He wanted to avoid calling unusual attention to himself. Aware, as he was, of the fact that he'd rejected his own roots to such extent that he'd avoided all contact with the strange world his own father had belonged to, for far longer than he'd ever lived within it. There had been nothing left for him here, after all... At least not once his mother had managed to finally perish in her quest to keep content the brute she'd chosen to throw her whole life away on...

Whatever fate had befallen that thrice-dammed bastard, Tobias Snape, after the last time they'd seen each other, Severus had never known nor truly cared. He'd found out about his mother's illness after she'd already died. _Died_ because she hadn't wanted to explain to her wizard-hating husband that _her_ kin was far more advanced than his own when it came down to health care. If she'd _bothered_ to pay a single visit to St. Mungo's she'd have survived, but no. Oh, no!. _That_ would have been far too sensible a thing to do... never mind that it had left her son an orphan. Or that, in behaving thus, she'd lost both her life and the blasted man in the end, anyway... She'd chosen her precious Tobias over her own son and when he'd found that out, during her funeral, no less!, he had also found courage enough to scream truly unforgivable things right into his father's shocked face for the very first time in his life. He'd been seventeen then, had left home in an absolute storm of rage and grief and never bothered to return...

Without the promise of his mother's presence in the house there had been nothing left for him to either take from or offer to his progenitor. Eileen had chosen that old bastard and paid the prize for it dearly, she paid it in both her own and her son's blood. They'd also paid with every tear they had shed along the years and the bitter disappointment that they'd found within their lives. All of it because the man she'd chosen hadn't been able to get past the fact that neither of them were... _muggle_ _enough..._ for his taste.

Tobias had also chosen, of course. He'd married his mother in the first place, had wanted her enough at one point to beget a child with her. But hadn't cared enough for her to find a way to keep her alive and whole for as long as he possibly could. He'd refused to ask, to search... to move Heaven and Earth in order to find some solution that might have kept her with them for a single second longer... He'd known that she was _magical_ all along. Had been aware of the undeniable fact that there were things wizards could do that escaped his own limited understanding of what's possible and what is not, but he'd _chosen_ to ignore that avenue of possibilities completely and had ended up paying for that decision by loosing his young wife...

Severus had no more time for the kind of resentment he'd once held against the pair, nor for his former _need_ to hear the apology that he used to believe they still owed him. He didn't want to keep holding onto the kind of disillusionment that had broken the barely-there-confidence of the child he'd once had been. His parents... his parents had been simply _wrong_ for one another. They had _both_ hated each other too much in the end, they had never loved the other enough from the very beginning... and they certainly had neither cared for, nor really deserved to have been granted the opportunity of bringing a child into the home they had created. A home that had lacked... _everything. _A home that had never truly been any such thing, not in the way it counted...

Those maudlin thoughts, the likes of which he hadn't bothered to contemplate in almost two whole decades, aggravated him no end and he washed his hands furiously. Then proceeded to put his pale face through the ordeal of enduring the very same kind of distressed, harsh scrubbing.

When he could take no more of that he used an intriguingly black colored toothbrush that he assumed Potter must have been intending for his use, feeling utterly superior all the time in view of the childish behavior of the auror. A black toothbrush?... Seriously?. The unsubtle dig at his own color preferences had been tried a time too many by far better pranksters than Lily's child.

He rinsed the toothbrush with punctilious attention to detail. Regally ignoring the irreverent red, lion-shaped cup meant to hold the utensil and depositing it, instead, on the corner of the shelf that ran all along the lower edge of the mirror that hung above the washbasin. His point thus made with both: _respectful_ and _silent_ dignity, he exited the bathroom with a half-amused snort and a spring of defiant purpose to his step.

A disgusted look towards the door showed him the table still perched majestically over the bland carpeting of the hallway... There was no one out there at the moment and he wondered for a second why it was that the masses had abandoned the entryway before remembering having heard someone hollering inelegantly that there was a rope down in the basement storage cubicle...

The thick coat that Potter had given him yesterday hung in splendid solitude from a peg inside the hallway closet and he grabbed it with a deep sigh of relief. He needed _peace_. He needed it now and, by Salazar!, he was going to get it... He slipped out of the doorway with the quiet efficiency of long practice. Not once thinking of the boy he'd left behind as he applied himself to the self-imposed task of... _vanishing_.

The stairs took him down one floor and he walked towards the lift there. He was relatively certain that he'd never cross the auror, if he boarded the contraption here, and saw no reason to waste his meager energy in endless arguments with the difficult child. Not while he could just... save himself the trouble of enduring a truly stupid altercation.

He was right in his assumption, as it turned out, and he soon found himself in the huge lobby of the building without having encountered a single person on his way down. A uniformed gentleman sat, clearly bored, behind a gleaming counter. The strange bookcase at his back filled with little holes that held what looked suspiciously like... paper slips. His steps faltered as he attempted to find a good reason to be here that'd convince the muggle man to let him walk past him, but he found himself relieved when that wasn't even necessary. One sharp nod of his head towards the stranger granted him a perfectly gleaming smile and a punctiliously polite:

"Good Morning, Mr. Snape, Mr. Potter informed us all that you'd be visiting with him for a while. I hope you enjoy your first vacation in the city, Sir!"

He could have laughed at the idiocy of the boy, giving the muggles any kind of explanation for his presence in the building could only accomplish the purpose of facilitating his own escape from it, at any point he so desired. And he desired it now with every exhausted fiber of his being...

"I hope so, too" He muttered politely for the doorman's benefit, never actually stopping in his determined path towards the revolving doors. Just as he reached them, though, he decided to ease his own cause even further with the staff, just in case, and turned his head around, offering the stranger a very small smile over one shoulder and wishing him jovially: "Have a good day!"

Sunlight met him as he stood perfectly still in the busy pavement for about half a second. London stretched before him in rare warm weather and he felt better at once. In control. Confident.

He broke into a long-limbed walk, without so much as a backwards glance, and felt much more calmer. Relaxed. Stronger... To have, so unexpectedly, gained the very welcome understanding that he could simply walk himself straight into freedom at any point he so desired brought a sudden, relieved exhilaration to his paranoid mind.

Traffic buzzed all around him. People walked. Animals trudged behind elderly owners and the common life of content muggles soothed his own worries into a more manageable size. His senses focused so completely on the sights, the sounds and the smells that surrounded him that he drifted along happily for about half an hour,without bothering to check the time.

His strength was not what it used to be, though, and he was conscious of his thin legs cramping as he stood awaiting for a traffic light to allow him right of passage. His black eyes searched the road quickly and found a park. There was an empty bench beckoning him closer with the promise of some rest. He crossed the road and headed for the quiet corner with stubborn bloody-mindedness, thighs all but trembling under the unusual strain he'd just put them trough so soon after being released from St. Mungo's. His emaciated form plopped down on to the bench with inelegant gracelessness and he allowed his pale lips to part slightly, quietly gasping for breath...

Some time passed while he sat there: a darkly attired gentleman simply enjoying the sunshine, watching people stroll casually by. No one noticed him very much. Nobody cared... and he found himself comforted by the anonymity. He was no murderer here. No spy. No object of revenge. No despised ex-teacher. He was neither hated nor loved. He was nothing but a dark shape on a bench...

One second stretched slowly into the next as he perched there, enjoying this rare feeling of freedom with quiet glee. Eventually, though, his peacefulness was broken by brute force as he suddenly realized that there were thoughts crowding his mind. Foreign thoughts... panicked tendrils of another person's consciousness that were attempting to _breach_ him!...

His eyes clamped closed instinctively and he became an impenetrable blank, echoing walls of utter nothingness. He became instantly blind and deaf and quite mute too. He was not conscious of how truly ruthless his determined -and forceful- rejection of the mind trying to reach him had actually been, he knew nothing but the terror of the attempted Legilimency attack. Memories -so many- of having the Dark Lord and Albus, both, attempting to invade his thoughts swirled within his consciousness like bubbles of sheer poison and he followed the instinctive urge to abandon his position. Retreat, find cover... _run!._

His eyes shot open and he directed them immediately towards his own shoes. Towards the indistinct greyness of the asphalt that made up every street in the city of London. There was nothing there that could possibly help his mind-stalker identify his location and entrap him, nothing that would put him at risk by giving his position away... Small, careful steps allowed him to abandon the whole area and he breathed a sigh of relief when he finally found himself three blocks away from that bench by the park...

He was uncertain as to how much of his surroundings the unwelcome voyeur had managed to glimpse before he'd became aware of his intrusion, but was confident that he was probably mostly safe by now.

Police cars were shooting past along the road. Sirens blared, causing chaos of the worst kind. He allowed himself to become lost among the crowds as they were jostled around, in the urgent need to make room for all that unexpectedly displaced traffic... In the blink of an eye the road became too packed to move and he knew that he'd have trouble keeping his wounded arm away from unwanted contact with the careless muggles.

Potter had charmed the shield to give the appearance of some kind of device that the muggles themselves used to carry their own broken limbs in, whenever they were unlucky enough to injure themselves. But _nothing_ could have disguised, or even _explained_, the distinctive blue flashes of warning magic that the ward emitted every single time that it was triggered. His eyes zeroed in on an alley, just a few streets down the road, and he headed towards it with a renewed purpose. It took five minutes of truly nightmarish struggle to reach the relative safety of the side street and, when he did, his eyes opened with pleasure as he spotted the small door to an antique shop that seemed to be open. Worn, leather-bound books filled the cramped window display and he all but flew in that direction, heart beating with deep joy at the prospect of losing a few minutes among the sorely missed presence of the inked word, carefully preserved for all eternity within the loving embrace of manually-bound-leather and thick parchment...

He walked in and a bell that was old fashioned and pleasantly mellow announced his entrance.

A short, plump man came to the front and stared at him expectantly through small round glasses. Severus looked around and the shadow of a small, pleased smile curved his lips. There must have been _thousands_ of books in the cramped room. Then his eyes all but doubled in size when he spotted the small tome set on a pedestal, in the corner. Soft, artificial light fell gently over the delicately printed scene of a young mistress who was attempting to teach two small maidens the beautiful art of reading. A magnificent blue sky filled the background of the whole image, broken only by the exquisite nobility of an ancient cherry tree, ablaze with soft-petaled, pink flowers...

"Is that really what I think it is?" He wondered aloud, astonished, and the most pleased of smiles broke across the shopkeeper's mouth.

The man responded quietly but with no small amount of glee:

"That'll depend entirely on what you think it is, good Sir. I take it that you _like_ books?"

Severus' dark eyes dared not stray away from that fussily dusted off pedestal. He weaved carefully around the packed room until he stood right beside it and could finally stare down in awe at the book that rested there. For a second he was voiceless, utterly enthralled by that beautifully rendered image...

"It is a first edition of Blake's "Songs of innocence and of experience", is it not?"

A gentle chuckle filled the small room. It was a delighted, carefree sound.

"I see you know your books, my friend. I haven't had the pleasure of a visitor like you for a very long time. Would you care for a cup of tea?"

The offer distracted him enough to lift his dark eyes away from the lovely illustration. The other man was old and had a look about him that spoke of the kind of disheartened loneliness that he could easily relate to. The room was warm and clean, it was packed full of books that picked his curiosity too.

He decided to take the small risk of accepting such tempting invitation. A little conversation about books with this old man, who seemed to love the things almost as much as he himself did, couldn't possibly harm him. It'd be lovely if he could seat himself somewhere, too...

"It'd be an honor, Mr...?"

"Crowley. Robert Crowley at your service, Sir. Welcome to Rare Editions For The Enlightened And The Discerning, my friend. If you'd care to take a seat by the counter I shall bring you a hot cuppa in just a second. Then we can chat"

He didn't know how much time passed as he sat there, happily consuming cup of tea after cup of tea. Contentedly involved in the most exhilarating conversation that he'd shared with anyone for a very long time... There were untold literary treasures arranged within the packed shelves of this jewel of a shop. First editions that he'd only ever read about but never, actually, seen. Rare works, written by well-known authors that had barely seen the light of day... They discussed them all. He even touched a few yellowed pages with trembling fingers while his eyes became bright with dazed wonder and heartfelt pleasure... Robert Crowley was entertaining, knowledgeable and infinitely patient. He seemed to crave the company of another almost as much as Severus himself craved the man's books.

Eventually, though, the increasing cacophony of the absolute racket coming in from the streets drove them both to the windows... Their eyebrows furrowed with astonishment as they registered the sheer amount of uniformed police that filled both the small alley, just outside the modest shop, and the tiny sliver of road that they could glimpse beyond it..

"Something must have happened..." His companion commented in a small and wobbly voice and he must have looked utterly confused because his host turned towards him and added:

"Terrorists, you know?. There has been quite the trouble in the past. Bridges exploding. People suddenly disappearing from their homes in the middle of the night. The underground was targeted a few times... that sort of thing. It's been _years_ though, at least four. Maybe even five since the last time I saw so much police..."

Severus' heart halted at that particular time-frame. He knew exactly what the muggle was talking about. Had most probably been among the beasts responsible for all that remembered havoc. The war... Voldermort's war had touched the muggles too... He shook his head in agreement, through a veritable fog of almost suffocating shame. The assent tore apart something deeply hidden inside him that was still too raw. Too wounded. That hadn't yet had time enough to heal...

"I've heard about that..."

Crowley looked right at him and smiled reassuringly.

"Don't look so worried, Sir. None of those things ever brought out this amount of police on to the streets. Don't you see?. There are no ambulances_._ No fire-trucks. No helicopters, sweeping wildly over our heads... Whatever has happened looks more like trouble than disaster to me"

Reedy shoulders relaxed ever so slightly as his own senses focused on the lack of rescue teams. His companion's obvious familiarity with the ways of the muggles had caught on onto their absence before he himself had registered that very important fact and he wondered idly what on Earth could be going on...

"Maybe someone's finally robbed the Crown Jewels for real" He whispered in a half-hearted attempt at humor and they both gasped with almost hysterical mirth.

"As I'm an Irishman by birth I won't deny that it'd amuse me to see that. You on the other hand... do speak with the accent of a true northerner. A Scot, I'd say, and that would make us both... almost friends, at least with regards to this small, uncharitable sentiment. Would it not?"

He was disinclined to begrudge the old man this one, insignificant, smidgen of himself. It wouldn't hurt him to confess something as irrelevant indeed as his own origins. He had no more true links to them, anyway...

"I was born near Lancashire, although I must confess that I've worked in Scotland for many years now. That land holds me in it's thrall, I'm afraid. I've reached the point were it'd be churlish to disagree with your assessment. I've become a Scot at heart, the region has become my home in a way that my native Northern England never did."

Aged eyes studied him with a gentle kind of curiosity.

"Shame, then, that London won't hold your interest long enough for us to enjoy the company of a kindred soul more often. Books are being replaced by flashier things these days and it's hard, almost impossible, to find another person willing to talk about them for any length of time..."

He looked around in the stretching silence, heart comforted by the simplicity of the pleasure that his surroundings gave him.

"I shall return before I leave, I promise. I have enjoyed myself this afternoon more than I have in recent years... I might even purchase a book or two from your collection"

Pleasure flashed in the gaze of his glad host.

"Then I shall look forwards to that very welcome occasion, my good friend... would you like to call a cab before leaving?. I know it's rude to mention such things, but... you have the look of a man who has been gravely ill."

He faltered for a second, turning around slowly to stare right into the face of this old man. A strange object was being held in his direction. A square thing with small buttons, it was cordless, dial-less, too small... It looked nothing like the old phone his father used to have, although it was clear to him, judging by the other man's actions, that it's function was the same. Technology seemed to advance also for muggles...

"You are correct, of course. I have been recently ill, but I am... most satisfactorily recovering. I don't think I'll need a cab for my short trip back, though. Nevertheless I must thank you for the kind offer, Mr Crowley"

"Ah! I see. You are an independent man, are you not?. You wish to make your way alone, unhindered... Farewell then and remember to return. You are not the only one who enjoyed our afternoon of tea, books, and fine conversation"

He left the small shop with a smile on his face, a lightened heart and a promise to himself to remember the old man and his cramped, little book shop... He'd recovered some of his strength while he'd sat quietly and now felt recovered enough to go back to the madhouse that was Potter's flat.

Long pale fingers rose to button up the coat that he was wearing and he looked towards the sky in search of the sun. Morning seemed to have given way to very early afternoon and he suddenly realized just how long he'd been away. He started to walk out of the alley, thoughts distracted with the task of attempting to remember if the boy had actually mentioned when, exactly, that accursed dinner party of his was to take place. He could not remember it cropping up in the conversation at all.

-Well... I hope there's enough time for me to have a shower and a change of clothes, at the very least- He muttered under his breath, grouchily.

They had still been in the kitchen, locked in that bloody uncomfortable discussion about Potter's expectations, when Ron Weasley had shown up with the news that he'd brought the auror's new table. It was tucked up, apparently, in the back of a van that he'd hired a friend of his father's to drive.

There had been no time after that, nor privacy enough, for Severus to ask Potter for a change of attire. He'd decided to forego his morning shower as well on account of the unpleasant sensation that the constantly opened door of the house had given him and, therefore, still wore the same disconcertingly flimsy apparel that the auror had presented to him yesterday, when he'd showed up at the hospital to collect him. Severus had slept on the things now, had wandered through a quarter of London wearing them without having previously bothered to refresh them in any way and was loath to attend any kind of social gathering, be it welcome or otherwise, smelling quite like he did at the moment...

There was still a lot of mayhem on the road: stopped traffic clogged every street and police officers tromped all over the place, grainy picture in hand... Instinctively he shied away from all law and order personnel. He found them vaguely threatening, as they reminded him uncomfortably of the aurors. Their presence stressed him further with memory upon memory of worse times... Long practice took over and he turned away from the main thoroughfare. His dark clothing kept him hidden among the lengthening shadows, but he studied the street patrons all around him. It was clear to him that there was something going on, something big enough to grant unprecedented attention from the constabulary. He became wary in a heartbeat, worried sick by the idea of being threatened. He walked the streets alone, while it was perfectly obvious that some unidentified muggle criminal was at large within the crowd. He was disarmed and lacked the soothing presence of his own, powerful magic. He felt at a disadvantage in a way that regularly didn't affect him in the slightest. He knew that whoever they were hunting had, so far, quite successfully avoided the Bobbies and that meant that they were traveling alongside him, hugging the shadows like only all true scoundrels ever learn to do...

The park he'd visited earlier finally came into his view. The crowds had thickened here, though. Many shoppers and young mothers having come out to enjoy the unusually warm weather...

It was a scene that brought him both worry and relief. He could be quite inconspicuous here, there were too many people around for him to call anyone's attention in any way, but he'd be also more exposed. His bad arm was a constant weakness that could be bumped into by anyone careless enough to step too close... If his limb was jostled then the ward's flickering shield would expose the fact that there was something rather unusual about him and, with this much police all over the place, it would be quite a struggle to slip off... He sighed before taking the first uncertain step out of the shadows. He wanted nothing but to return, as soon as he could possibly manage it, to the safety of Potter's building.

A sudden flash of ferociously invasive Legilimency threatened to bring him to his knees. His mental barricades remained intact, but the attack unnerved him so much that he halted in the middle of the park. He'd been getting brief flashes of increasingly stronger attempts to make contact during the course of the morning, but his shields had been in place and he'd ignored them. He'd been busy having fun, far too entertained to wonder why it was that he'd been chosen to be the specific target of someone with enough ability to attempt a remote Legilimency attack... There weren't that many wizards able to do it, at least not to his knowledge, and the idea that he'd caught the attention of anyone with both the ability and the power to perform such a feat simply... terrified him.

A child bumped into his leg and he all but flinched, senses reeling with the need to walk away. He could not afford to remain standing out in the open. Stepping carefully backwards he ignored the mother shooting fast-paced apologies in his direction and weaved between two cyclists, cradling his wounded arm to his chest all the time... The park seemed to have lengthened since he last crossed it. He swore under his breath as his ridiculous shoes squeaked gently against the crunchy soil with every bloody step that he took.

A radio crackled somewhere behind him and he flinched away from the certain presence of a law officer. He understood that he was becoming too agitated, that his own path to safety laid before him in a straight line. He had no reason to fear the policemen at all, but his every instinct was alive with the need to turn around and find shelter. NOW!.

He took a sharp corner to the right. Heartbeat hammering against his wrists with pounding force. His back shook as he sagged against the rough brick of some building or other, black eyes closing for a second as he told himself to breathe... Panic didn't help at all in situations such as these. He was certain that he was safe enough, at least for the time being.

A moment or two more passed before he could convince himself to open his still closed eyes, in order to search the busy main street for signs of danger. Horns were blaring and a bus was attempting to squeeze between two badly parked police cars, bringing all traffic to a halt in utter chaos. He abandoned his hiding place and walked determinedly forwards. Ebony head bent down, towards the floor, and shoulders hunched. He crossed the street in a series of ungraceful little hops. Weaving, as rapidly as he could manage it, between the halted traffic and avoiding altogether the much busier route that followed the road down, towards the intersection regulated by a bunch of much ignored traffic lights. The street continued slightly downhill from here on end all the way to Potter's building and he sighed with relief when the crowd began to thin as he approached his destination.

He was mere steps away from the auror's tower when the large group by the door caught his attention. There was a lot more police here. Cars were parked everywhere in a wide arch... The glass doors to Potter's building were obscured by the sheer amount of uniforms hovering outside. Electricity cracked in the air all around him. The echoing sounds of broken down radio transmissions filled the silence with their guttural, uncomfortably metallic sounds...

He could not understand what he saw, but he trembled with fear. He only knew that something must have happened here and his sudden terror knew no bounds... Potter. Dear Merlin!... _Potter_ had been targeted, somehow!. Suddenly paling features froze in absolutely livid fury and he wondered who, exactly, would have _dared_ to touch the boy. He was going to rip their souls to ribbons if it turned out that they'd harmed Lily's child...

"I am telling you, officer, that we have very reliable intelligence to indicate that our target is on the move, he is being transported in our direction as we speak!"

The high-pitched whine that he automatically recognized as Granger's annoying, know-it-all-voice, reached his ears. A second later the absolutely frustrated answer of a plainly clothed detective did the same:

"You've been having the same ruddy "reliable intelligence" all-morning-long and fat good it has done, Mrs!. I'm telling you that I'm going to pull my boys away from this spot. It's a waste of our resources to concentrate this much manpower on such a narrow area. If the man has been taken then he is being moved as far away from here as the "perp's" vehicle can manage, while we continue to listen to your people and _waste_ valuable time!"

"No. NO!. You are the one who doesn't understand the situation. The target himself is one of our most accomplished operatives. He is recovering from very serious injuries that won't allow for a fast transport. There is also a chance that he might have collapsed somewhere and is currently _unable_ to reach help..."

His feet halted at the very edge of the crowd surrounding Granger and her extremely pissed off companion. They were all so involved in the verbal match that not a single one of them noticed his presence and, for that brief second, he wondered how the Hell some bastard could have managed to injure Potter and then kidnap him while the Weasley boy was near. He'd heard the stories while he'd laid in Azkaban, an unwilling victim to healer Peterssen's own brand of vigilante justice. Now that he thought about it that sick bastard had droned on unendingly about "The Auror Wonder-Team" and their _wonderful,_ _daring_ and absolutely _awesome_ exploits. A complete bag of propagandistic tosh, in Severus' own opinion, but then... no one had ever _bothered_ to ask him about it.

His eyes swept the packed entrance and found Minnie, Arthur, Molly... He saw Luc and Cissy, both. He surveyed the crowd, searching for another white-blond head, and there he was... Draco, seemingly slumped next to a dark-haired man that vaguely resembled Frank Longbottom...

-Longbottom? as in... _Neville_ _Longbottom?_- His mind boggled at that one and he shied away from the thought like an owl hides from the light. He saw Weasley. And Weasley. And Weasley... Merlin knew there were enough of the damned gingers to drive him truly spare and there, right beside young Ginevra, with his dark head lowered and his eyes closed in what appeared to be utmost concentration, was Potter himself...

-Wait... Wait a bloody minute!- Potter. _Potter_ was right _there!._

It was then that his confusion knew no bounds and he cleared his weakened throat, as loudly as he could possibly manage it, before opening his mouth to question the awful bush at the back of the Know-It-All's head:

"What on Earth is going on here, Mrs Granger?"

Like the sudden flash of lighting before thunder his own question seemed to still the very air around him. For a frustratingly long second the whole lot seemed to have been turned to stone right were they stood and then:

"SEVERUS SNAPE!. Where in the bloody Hell have you been?" Potter's absolutely livid roar rent the air and the whole crowd just galvanized into motion. He blinked, utterly astonished. Onyx eyes widened with uncomprehending disconcertion as he looked around, straight into the faces of more than half the members of the former Order of the Phoenix and a truly weird assortment of strangers that were dressed like muggle police-officers.

"I needed some respite from all the infernal racket that you were creating with that table and decided to go out for a short walk"

Silence...

The kind of startled quietude that is thick and hard and about as heavy as molasses seemed to have descend over his intriguingly astonished audience. Then Potter moved towards him with the speed of a cheetah:

"YOU BLOODY BASTARD!. You didn't go out for a "short walk," you've been _gone_ for seven hours!. I've turned London upside down searching for you!"

He was so gob-smacked that he laughed, _laughed a_nd LAUGHED, hysterically, right into the absolutely bloodless face of Harry Potter. The boy was obviously enraged. His green eyes were shooting daggers that should have already murdered him twice over and the uncomfortable-looking crowd that surrounded them had started to back away from the ferociously looking youth with a healthy kind of wariness.

"Don't be ridiculous, boy!. I was _never_ _lost._ I'm a 40 year old man, for goodness sake!. I have been looking after myself for far longer than you've been alive, Potter, and I seem to have survived well enough, without this kind of histrionics" His tone alone should have turned the whelp into living stone. He himself was more than maddened by the presumptuousness of the creature. To treat him, HIM!, as if he were some kind of... helpless _toddler..._ It was a humiliation beyond endurance!. He would not _tolerate_ being screamed at, in public, no less, by this utter bastard!.

Verdant eyes filled with tears. Enraged, distressed, truly heart-broken tears that kept falling silently, like ghosts, down Potter's cheeks... The boy trembled from head to toes as he stood there, all broken eyes and fiercely gritted jaw, as if poised for war.

"You don't _understand_ anything, Severus!. You don't even _see_ what you've done to me. To all of us!. We wanted to _celebrate_ your improving health with you, show our gladness at your return to the world of the conscious. But everything is just... IMPOSSIBLE... with you!

We ended up searching for you all morning long. We gave up on lunch and rest. Abandoned the chance to enjoy this one Sunday away from work, so that we could find out WHAT IN THE BLOODY HELL HAD HAPPENED TO YOU!. We called in favors to every single person that we could think of!. We fought like cat and dog between us. We've been running all over the place, trying to find you. Some of us even _cried_ because of you and you... you just... WENT OUT FOR A BLOODY WALK!... YOU... YOU ARE AN ABSOLUTELY SELFISH BASTARD!..."

TBC...


	14. Chapter 14

_**THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 14 **_

Potter seemed mad enough to chew off the walls themselves...

He'd been forcibly marched upstairs and deposited on the sofa with frigidly polite care before those eyes had, literally, pinned him to the spot.

"You better stay right there, Snape, or Godric help me... I will tear you limb from limb, if you so much as move an inch!. Now I have to go back down there and fix all this bloody mess. I've got to dismiss the police, call off the welcome dinner that I'd planned... So many carefully laid plans, Severus!. All of them destroyed because of _you_!"

The auror had turned sharply around then and left him to his sea of deep bewilderment... The worst of it had nothing to do with the child's bizarre behavior, though. The worst was that he'd allowed himself to remain there... seating meekly on the very spot where he'd been dropped, like a puppet turned to stone... He could not process the situation. Could not understand exactly what in the Seven Levels of Hell had just happened here... But he'd seen enough seething anger in his life to know that Potter... _Potter_ was seriously ticked off.

The empty house seemed eerie as he sat there. Dark eyes downcast, like a chastised child.

He felt quite... _disappointed._ Cheated, somehow. Potter had managed to destroy all the lovely joy that he'd gathered during his outing with his puzzling histrionics. The morning had started off badly enough, that was true. But then... then he'd managed to go out and encountered Mr. Crowley and his treasure trove of books... He'd found _peace,_ _quiet a_nd _acceptance_ there. He'd been nothing but a man who just... happened to love the written word.

The front door was brutally yanked open and then immediately closed with such force that it was a miracle it didn't actually smash into a million smithereens. He remained where he was but his head lifted in a jerky and rigid motion with the utterly wearying need to assess the danger that was coming his way... He straightened his spine and closed his hands into a pair of frustrated fists while his dark eyes became riveted to the mouth of the corridor. The continued absence of his dearly missed wand burned a hole on the empty skin of his palms. His pulse pounded, fluttering visibly at the side of his tightly clenched jaw. He was tired. He was hungry. He was troubled to his very bones by that inexplicable little scene downstairs and he wasn't in the mood to be brutalized by the clearly incensed auror.

Potter entered the room like a hurricane the beach. He was all wild motions and noisy grunting, forceful violence was clearly written in every line of his rigidly taut body...

"I am mad enough to kill you right now, Severus!"

The voice alone was terrifyingly convincing, never mind the ominously glittering green eyes or the mighty fists that those hands were currently curled into. He felt the instinctive need to swallow nervously and his cheeks colored with temper at the very idea of... of _himself..._ fearing this _whelp!._

"I see..." He offered those two words as calmly as he could manage, but he saw nothing at all, of course. Least of all anything approaching half-a-sensible explanation for the unprovoked temper-tantrum that the jerk was pulling out of seemingly... nowhere.

Potter took a deep, deep breath. Emerald eyes flashing with the complete disdain of one who knows he's being told nothing but utter, unadulterated trash.

"Do you?. I doubt that very much, Severus!. It is, in fact, my absolute conviction that you haven't got the slightest clue as to what exactly it is that you've done wrong that's keeping you reasonably safe from being punched on the nose right this second!"

His eyes widened, pale face turned ashen-gray as his gaze darted surreptitiously towards those white-knuckled fists... He opened his bloodless lips to offer some kind of retort, but the boy halted his next words cold when he growled ferociously:

"Do. Not. Make. It. Any. Worse!"

Silence descended upon the room then and there was an absence of words and sound that allowed the very worst kind of resentment to fester within Severus' mind. His stress levels shot up to the ceiling, but he remained seated and silent. Dark eyes glittering like onyx in his waxy, exhausted face.

"Did you at least have the good sense to eat something?. I bet you aren't even aware that you've missed two whole sets of potions..." The youth's tone sounded explosive, frustrated. It had an unpleasant taint of defeated dejection adding grating bitterness to it that Severus did not like. Not at all.

"I drank tea" He offered the reply meekly, quietly. An attempt to offer a very reedy olive branch that the child, blind as he was, missed completely.

"You. Drank. TEA!"

Incredulous laughter erupted from the boy's chest in a river of mordant, unpleasantly bitter anger.

"You drank tea while all of _us_ had NIGHTMARES imagining you collapsed in the back of some alley, slowly bleeding to death!. Or attacked by a fanatic who'd somehow found out that you are now MAGIC-LESS!. Or being kidnapped, by who-knew-what-kind-of-maniacs, in order to demand heap upon heap of galleons from the Ministry itself...

You missed your potions, one of them the vital serum that'll keep the effects of Nagini's venom at bay until you recover fully, but... never mind any of _that._ All must be well with the whole blasted world because the git extraordinaire, Severus Snape, actually remembered to drink Tea!"

He sat there like a lump of dumb, mute coal. He knew not what to say to soothe the increasingly peeved creature that Potter had become. There was something quite _odd_ here... These... _reactions..._ of the boy seemed a tad... _extreme. _He'd done _nothing_ to deserve being treated thus!. He resented having been put in a position that virtually tied his hands when it came to retaliating with the full virulence of his own sharp wit. He gritted his teeth harshly, reminding himself of the fact that he'd _vowed_ to RESPECT this irksome insect!. The brat had never sworn the same to him, though. Potter could, in theory, abuse him all he wanted and there was nothing, absolutely nothing, that Severus himself could do in his own defense.

For a second, one single second of absolutely miffed madness, he contemplated the exhilarating prospect of standing on his feet and majestically abandon this... _disturbing..._ little bachelor pad of Potter's. Just imagining the shocked expression on the insufferable twit's face brought a soft cocoon of warmth to his cramping stomach... Then the fact that he'd sworn their loathsome pact on Draco's life returned to his mind with the abruptness of a hammer killing an ant and he sagged in abject misery against the backrest of the sofa. His black eyes closed when he sighed with unconscious heartfelt sorrow...

"Severus?"

Potter's tone had, surprisingly, mellowed down, but he was too _tired_ to bother with the useless task of attempting to ponder over the boy's mercurial moods. So he ignored the mystery and addressed the query with a voice gone gruff with weariness:

"Yes, Mr. Potter?"

Silence...

Stunned, perplexed, utterly rattled silence filled the empty space and Severus didn't even care about what it could mean. Not at all. Potter sighed audibly: a half-rueful, too-loud sound that heralded the steps bringing the boy near: One. Two. Three. Four... A couple more and he felt the disturbing shift in the air around him that alerted his every sense to the discomfiting presence of the gryffindor that now stood so close to him, too close for his peace of mind... The sofa's cushy surface bounced slightly when the weight of the auror joined his own and his body went rigid with the absolute horror of having to share a seat with the little menace.

"You drive me crazy!"

His eyes shot open and he turned around to stare straight into a pair of bright emerald eyes. He was peeved enough to continue looking right into them as he cuttingly delivered his frustrated, irked response:

"I have only ever offered the courtesy of _reporting_ my every move to Albus Dumbledore, Potter. As you are quite clearly _not _him, nor do I work for you in a position that requires you to be aware of my whereabouts, I saw no reason to inform you of my wish to abandon your... _charming_ _residence._.. for a few hours while you were, by the way, otherwise engaged"

Golden colored cheeks turned rosy with some kind of passionate emotion.

"I was worried!. You can barely walk unaided, for Merlin's sake!. I couldn't believe that you'd be crazy enough to just... _leave _without even bothering to take the slightest precaution to guarantee your own safety. It's all so unlike you that it just... boggles the mind!"

His feathers ruffled at the very insinuation that he was some kind of little limp kitten who couldn't be expected to take a single step unaided.

"Just because you wish to see me impaired doesn't mean that I am actually so, auror Potter"

"Impaired?. IMPAIRED?" The man seemed to be having some kind of stroke right here, on the sofa.

Those green eyes bulged with the perfect anger of a wild animal. His neck corded and turned red with the boiling of his blood and he breathed like a horse about to expire after having run the very best race of it's life.

"You think me callous enough to have wished this... awful weakness of yours upon your head?. I remember how you used to be: you were brutal. You were brilliant. You were powerful enough, and vicious enough, to make most of us retreat. I confronted Voldermort himself and managed to at least hit him with one curse or another, but you..._ you_ I could not touch!. You deflected ALL of them, you did it long before they were even half way in your direction and now... _now_ you can't even hold your wand!..."

Those words broke him. They just... BROKE HIM!. Hammered him once more with the awful knowledge that he was... a squib. A magic-less _nobody!._ An utter waste of space...

What the boy saw in his face he never knew but he could see those emerald eyes widening with the horrible awareness that a line had been crossed here, a line that should have never been crossed between them.

"Severus!..."

Tanned hands dared to raise, muscled arms driving them forwards, towards him, and there was nothing on this Earth, or even the Universe itself, that would have forced him to accept the coming touch. He shot up to his feet so fast that his forearm swung in a violent arch, triggering the protective ward over his wounded limb. Blue colored sparks flashed their angry warnings as he took a couple of steps away from the dark, leather couch.

Potter's gaze fixed guiltily on the ward. Pale young features turned thunderous as he was forced to abandon that blatantly _uncouth_ attempt at... _pawing_ him!...

"There's no need for you to run away from me, Severus!. What do you think I'll do, eh?. Look at you!. The only thing more ridiculous than you running from the sofa like a little scared bunny is the way you are staring at me now. I wasn't going to harm you in any way!"

Severus was so incensed by those taunting, cocky words that he just... opened his mouth and allowed the first words that came to it to do their damage. He wanted them to cut his enemy with their irrefutable truth and make him bleed.

"You. Harm. Me. Just. By. Being, Harry Potter!. Your mere _existence_ has conditioned mine to such a level that I haven't been _allowed_ to live my own life since the very day of your birth. I wished so hard for you to never return to the Wizarding World that I cried, do you hear? I CRIED the day Albus confirmed that Rubeus was bringing you to Hogwarts!. I saw nothing but the very worst of omens in your coming. If you did, then the Dark Lord would have to certainly follow... and I had already been a slave to the two of you for long enough"

Emerald eyes: stunned, wounded and so reminiscent of Lily's that they broke his heart anew, clashed with his own:

"You can't blame _me_ for any of that, I didn't even know you back then!. I'd done NOTHING TO YOU!"

The shaken sentences sounded like feeble, trite excuses to his ears. His jaw hardened further as he retaliated their intolerable mildness with the most powerful brutality that he could find within himself:

"You didn't have to, Potter. I had already lost HER because of _you_!. I was already _aware_ that he'll return. Also because of _you_. I have spent the best years of my life _buried_ at Hogwarts, i_gnoring_ every single offer inviting me to join this private Potions Lab or that other... I. Threw. My. Precious. Career. Down. The. Bloody. Drain, just to remain at the one place I knew you'd eventually come to, if you'd ever bothered to honor the wizarding side of your own nature. And that, Potter, _THAT!,_ I DID IT ALSO BECAUSE OF YOU. For HER, yes, but only because of _you!._

I laid my life at your feet, my future too!. I threw away the chance to lead a life far removed from the echoes of _your_ war against _him_ in order to protect you the second time around. I have _killed_ and I have _tortured_. I have allowed my own students to find harm. I've become the kind of MONSTER that I'd never wanted to be, BECAUSE OF YOU!, and I'd rather die than have _you_ touch me in any way!. I don't _need_ your guilt nor your hatred. Nor whatever the Hell it is that you've decided I deserve inside that twisted little head of yours. I'll fulfill this oath of ours to the letter. I'm doing this for _Draco, _but from you I want nothing at all. Not one single thing!"

Potter looked ill enough to die right there and then. His eyes shone bright green with tears. His hands shook. He was pale. And drawn. And trembling. He looked fragile and beautiful, like a sprite made out of dreams... Or nightmares. Or both...

"Gosh!... That hurt much worse than I expected it to..." That one sentence left those lips in a choked little whisper and the puzzlingly strange words settled between them like stones falling into a pool.

Silence followed them, like the shadow does the living, and the quiet that enveloped the both of them then felt like poison... The boy sat upon that couch, eyes alight with something so reminiscent of pain that Severus' chest tightened. He had never relished harming those he'd spent year after year attempting to protect... He had never been able to withstand the mere shadow of discontent in the green of Lily's gaze and to know, beyond all doubt, that he had caused it tore at something raw and instinctive deep inside him. He would not apologize, though. He. Could. Not!... He'd been driven by this creature to the very brink of sanity tonight and he'd just... _defended_ his very self with the only weapons still available to him.

"Sit down, Severus. You look ready to collapse."

Potter's voice startled him right out of his thoughts with that bewilderingly soft-voiced invitation and he frowned with uncertainty:

"I'll rather not"

"Oh, For Merlin's sake!"

The auror stood up abruptly then. Darkly stubbed jaw clenched so tightly that Severus could hear those teeth grind against one another as the boy strode purposely past him. A very elegant high-backed chair was fiercely yanked away from its position beside the large table that now rested in the middle of the dining room in truly magnificent splendor. The screech of wooden legs being carelessly dragged across the floor, towards his own immobile figure, rent the tense silence and he looked quite stupidly at the boy. Potter reached him once more, face ferocious with the kind of frayed patience of a parent being pushed past the limits of all possible restraint:

"You'll seat yourself down right this second, Severus Snape!. Whether you do so on the chair or on the sofa, I don't really care... but, by Godric, I'll wring your bloody neck myself if you collapse on me again!. Am I making myself clear or do I have repeat it again with smaller, slower words?"

He was stupefied into silent, meek compliance by the ferocity of those words. His legs folded and he dropped on the chair that the auror still held. The humiliation that engulfed him then knew no bounds and he sat there: rigid as a wooden plank, with his gaze set firmly on the bland expanse of beige that was the wall at the other end of the room.

A hand that was too-warm and perfectly unwelcome settled on the shoulder closest to the boy and he felt his neck give way to the abject sense of... shame... that simply... drowned him. His head lowered, long dark hair tumbling softly forwards to veil the abject misery that must be turning his already ghastly features into the kind of twisted mockery of ugliness more befitting a Halloween-night mask than any human face...

"All that fight... It is not necessary, Severus. You have _nothing_ to defend yourself from. I am on your side, for Merlin's sake!. I have been on your side for a long time."

He could not find the strength to deal with whatever game this was. Not at the moment, at the very least. His eyes closed behind the protective curtain of dark hair that hid his reactions from the brat's view and he shifted his shoulder very minutely away from that... _unnecessary._.. touch. Potter's digits abandoned their perch upon him with an obvious, but thankfully quiet, reluctance.

"I can _see_ that you don't believe me, you know?. You are not such a hard nut to crack once one finds out how to read your words. Or your silences... You say more when you keep quiet than you think, Severus. Or maybe it is that you don't really care enough about me, about what I might think of you, to attempt a lie..."

His eyes opened at that. His head rose towards the auror and his black gaze clashed with a pensive emerald one. His voice, when he finally spoke, was a very clear reflection of the sudden exhaustion that seemed to have befallen him out of virtually nowhere.

"I very rarely lie, Mr. Potter"

"I _know_ that, Professor. I think I knew that even when I was convinced that I hated you."

That response was so unexpected that he blinked, stunned, and a soft, uncomfortable flush of disconcertion tainted his pale cheeks. The auror's features were intensely focused on him. The youth gave the extremely discomfiting impression of being one-hundred-per-cent devoted to this strange conversation and Severus frowned. Uneasy.

The boy returned, very slowly, to the couch. His every move was bizarrely careful, unnecessarily gentle. Soothing, even. He was suddenly reminded of Rubeus Hagrid, of the way the giant behaved in the presence of one of those frightened and dangerous beasts that he'd invariably attempt to tame...

"I don't understand what is happening here" He was distressingly aware that he was tensing, his whole face was apple-red with the humiliation of knowing himself so utterly under scrutiny. He disliked attention when it was directed towards him, hated having foreign eyes trained upon his person for no reason that he could clearly discern and detested, to the point of total abhorrence, the very thought of anyone attempting to... _understand_ him.

He suspected... No. He was _certain_ that the brat was analyzing him. Studying his every motion and word carefully, like the herbologist examines the properties of one grubby seed or another... and he didn't have the smallest inkling as to why the irksome creature would even bother with such task. He felt exposed and vulnerable. Absolutely floored by the horribly disconcerting awareness of finding himself the object of someone else's focus.

"Nothing is happening here, Severus. We are... attempting to have a conversation, I think. That is nothing too sinister, is it?. We are just two men, who are trapped inside four walls with one another, trying to get to know their companion better"

"I'd rather pass on that, if you don't mind, Mr. Potter. I have very little interest in getting to know you as a person, you see?. We don't really run in the same circles, therefore I see no reason to bother with the effort of attempting a very... short-lived... rapport, if it's all the same to you"

The boy held on to his casual smile with visible effort. He was truly tenacious, it seemed. Taking every single one of those brutal shots with a disturbing equanimity that Severus found himself resentfully admiring.

"It's _not_ all the same to me, Professor. I don't _want_ to go back to the days when we hated one another. I've told you this before: I. DON'T. HATE. YOU. ANYMORE!. I won't let you hide from me, from everyone just because you are too emotionally-stunted to accept that there are people in this world who care very deeply for you. People _other_ than Draco-Bloody-Malfoy and his thrice dammed family!"

He heard nothing past that appallingly offensive definition of the whole of his persona:

"Emotionally-Stunted?" He repeated every syllable with the kind of outrage left for the most heinous of crimes and the fact that his bitterly cold tone managed to make the brat flinch couldn't soothe the sting that had been so very carelessly delivered to his own smarting pride.

"Sheesh!. I'm sorry, Sir, I... that was totally out of line and I do regret having said it quite that badly. But... I'm sure you get me, Snape. There's no need to throw a hissy fit over it. We are _trying_ to get past some seriously heavy stuff here. It has to be done some time, so... relax and just... take it, will you?. _You_ accused _me_ of having been born to destroy your whole dammed life and I took it on the chin, did I not?"

Severus' whole frame had turned into stone, totally transfixed by the sudden understanding that they were actually having some kind of... disgustingly hufflepuffish... _heart_ _to heart!:_

"I shall _not_ put up with this nonsense, Mr. Potter!" He exploded, in ruffled rejection of that astonishingly ridiculous idea. He shot to his feet in the very next blink and attempted to walk away, only to be most rudely interrupted by the auror's very pointed little comment:

"Running away, Severus?. I had you pegged for the kind of man who does not hide away from introspection"

His nostrils flared and his cheekbones colored with the kind of ire that only those named Potter had ever provoked in him with so very little effort:

"I _refuse_ to be taunted into conversation with you, like some kind of ridiculous teenager, Potter!. I am a grown man of forty. I have learned during my time not to engage in wasteful interaction, beyond the demands of formal courtesy, with those who are of no interest to me in any shape or form. I have no intention of descending into an even more degrading exchange of insults and condemnation with the likes of you.

Now, if you would excuse me, I had a very long day and I am tired. I am in need of a shower. Followed by a preferably wizarding change of clothes and a small meal. Unless, of course, you'd rather deny me the relief of fulfilling of those very basic needs?"

His black eyes were hard as stone when he fixed them upon the little bastard with the kind of frosty anger that would have made any hippogryph quiver. Potter merely glared at him, emerald eyes alive with a challenge that was tainted with a puzzlingly deep worry. It was the worry, he suspected, that finally won him his respite. For the boy's lips did grant him his own wishes with a few, softly spoken sentences:

"Of course you can shower, Severus. You can eat and rest, too. You should also take your potions, you know?. You've missed at least one dose of most of them... You come first, you see?. Even if you decide to doubt everything else at least do me the courtesy of never doubting _that._

They say that Rome wasn't built overnight and I suspect that we, Professor, will take _ages_ to even come to a small agreement. But it'll keep, at least for now. It will all keep... One day you'll be finally prepared to give us _both _a real chance. We can always come back to face all of these monsters again, Severus. Hopefully you'll trust me better by then and we'll be able to get things settled without any of it hurting us both this badly..."

TBC...


	15. Chapter 15

_**THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 15**_

The week started with the abhorrent realization that Potter had apparently demanded to be given all of his accumulated time off and had taken a three-month vacation in order to look after him.

His ears had thundered with the most absolute shock upon receiving the terrible news and he'd just sat there, literally numb with distress, as the bastard smiled at him with that cocky self-satisfaction while he prepared Severus' breakfast to the same disconcertingly fussy standards of the previous days.

"I hope you'll try the scones today, Severus. Draco did _insist_ that you are rather partial to the things"

He looked down when the auror finally placed his tea before him, black eyes registering all that silver cutlery and crisply folded white napkin with a sense of foreboding that he could not shake.

"This is all so... _excessive,_ Mr. Potter" That one sentence simply exploded from his lips in a harsh, overwhelmed whisper and the boy lifted his face to stare at him, bright smile dimming slightly as his attention was also directed to the table.

"You think that a single cup of tea and two scones with strawberry jam is too much breakfast?" A slight sharpness now tainted the irksome, cheerful tone that the little menace had been regaling his ears with, so far. A frustrated hand raked that creepily tangled mess of dark curls when the child pulled on his own hair with visible exasperation.

"You are taking a whole set of very strong potions, Severus. You _need_ to eat something decent!. Malfoy assures me that you are reasonably fond of these particular items, so... for once in your life, can't you just... eat your breakfast without us having to go to battle over it?"

He disliked in the extreme that insultingly paternalistic attitude. His mouth thinned with resentment and he took one single deep breath before attempting to explain himself. Again.

"This is not about the _food..._"

"It is not? "

Potter's sudden snap to attention brought him the same kind of vindictive pleasure that he used to enjoy as a teacher. Emerald colored eyes lowered once more to examine the dratted table with a new and puzzled focus.

"What is it about, then?"

He was floored by the creature's inability to see the obvious. By the, apparently genuine, lack of understanding that implied a certain amount of... respect... on the brat's part. Towards himself.

"This whole... _thing..._ it looks like... I don't know!. I feel as if it'll be a sacrilege to _spoil_ this lovely ensemble"

Potter blinked at him gormlessly:

"Lovely?. You think that something I've done is _lovely?_" The radiance of the smile that followed that bizarre question could have blinded a supernova. He could not fathom what it was about his own pointed complaint that could have provoked that kind of joy in the little brat, but... well, it was all rather... _irregular._

He stared at the smile dumbly. Embarrassed color spreading slowly all over his ghastly pale features as the other man just... GLOWED... at him!.

Nobody had ever ignited into... _shine..._ on the receiving end of one of his... _objections._

"Er... Mmmn... Severus?... You were saying?"

He blinked in dismayed rush to... recover... the decorum that he'd so very _briefly_ abandoned. He was irked with himself and with the child. He was at the very edge of a truly shameful loss of proper dignity. But he could not, for the life of him, understand why on Earth he felt the sudden urge to just... _run_ out of the room.

He could not fathom the cause of his unease. He knew only that he was very _bothered_ by the obvious oddities of the situation, but could not actually pinpoint what, exactly, was so wrong about it.

"I don't know how to explain it, Potter. Just... look at _yourself._ You are drinking your coffee in the most disturbing mug that I've ever seen!. The sight of it alone is a migraine-inducing nightmare..."

The boy looked perfectly floored.

"This is about my mug being too ugly for you?"

"No!"

"It isn't too ugly?"

"No. I mean, yes. Potter!... Pay attention, for Salazar's sake!. This is about the fact that you are drinking that... _beverage_ of yours from a perfectly ordinary monstrosity of a mug while I... I... I seem to have been served by Luc's very own house elves. There is all these silver and... the lemon wedges. The cup itself looks like some antique museum piece. It's just... too much!"

Confused green eyes turned amused in the space between one heartbeat and the next.

"I see... you are spooked because I'm treating you too well"

His blood froze when he realized that the child was totally right and what _that_ particular insight said about him could fill entire libraries of misery.

His head lowered and his thin, trembling hand rose towards the handle of that too-delicate cup. Cold, long fingers curled around the comforting warmth that was emanating from the pearl colored porcelain in instinctive response to their owner's sudden need to ground himself.

"You have _nothing_ to be ashamed of, Severus. Neither of us was responsible for the way we were brought up, you know?. That fault rests with the adults who surrounded us at the time"

"My childhood is no business of _yours,_ auror Potter. I resent the fact that you assume yourself entitled to trample all over my _private_ life without actually having ever been _invited_ to do so"

Potter chuckled. A small, soft sound that attempted to fill the kitchen with warm gentleness:

"Ouch!. You are in fine form this morning, I see. All that harshness and you haven't even taken a sip of my perfectly brewed tea."

His stomach twisted at the very idea of consuming any food and he pushed his chair back with a loud and jarring screech.

"I am not hungry. If you will excuse me, I'll..."

"I shall NOT excuse you!" Potter's face was beyond livid. He had risen, almost as if yanked upwards by invisible strings, and now stood there: all rigid muscles and a face as dark as thunder. He seemed more like a fighter about to engage in blood-curling battle than the man who had smiled at him so brightly only a second ago.

His dark eyes narrowed with the most absolute disconcertion and he breathed slowly, in and out, before he ventured a very quiet:

"I beg your pardon?"

"You will _sit_ at the table and _drink_ the whole bloody tea, Severus Snape!. You'll eat your blasted scones, filled to burst with that particularly hard to find brand of strawberry jam. I had to travel all the way to bloody Leeds to buy the stupid thing and I don't even _like_ Strawberry jam, for Merlin's sake!"

He was stunned into floored immovability.

"Potter..."

"Do not _"Potter"_ me!. I had it with the prickly attitude!. You sit there like a ruffled cat and do _nothing_ but complain. Then, when you are done with that, you just... _run_ away. Every. Bloody. Time!. There is nothing so _terrible_ here, Severus. IT'S JUST BREAKFAST!. Would it truly be so hard for you to leave all that suspicion behind for just a second and eat something?. You must be hungry, I _know_ that you must be. You hardly ate any dinner whatsoever...

I'll go have a shower or something, if it's too much for you to have breakfast with me here, but... for Godric's sake, just... sit down!"

The rant seemed to have drained the auror, somehow. Dulled green eyes lowered towards the table, as if their owner could not bear looking at him for a single second longer.

He returned to his seat with stiff reluctance. Throat constricted with the weight of about a million and one words that he could have uttered: angry words. Caustic, berating ones. Defensive. Outraged. Fierce...

He detested the whole concept of the child ordering him, HIM!, to eat his food as if he were some kind of unruly little urchin, but was weary of opening up yet another volley of anger between them both.

The auror's exhalation rent the air with the impact of an exploding, dangerously frustrated blast of sheer vexation and the very next sound that he heard was the thunderous pounding of the heels of those strange shoes that Potter had been wearing as he abandoned the kitchen in stormy silence.

Left alone with his luxuriously set breakfast Severus sighed uneasily.

One pale hand rose to rub wearily at the generously large bridge of his nose and his eyes closed tiredly.

He was, truly, not that hungry. But the idea of abandoning the food, only to be berated because of it at some point in the future, really bothered him more than he could bear. He knew that he owed the creature utter obedience... It had been quite pointedly demanded of him during that blasted avowal that he'd been -so very cleverly- tricked into...

That awareness filled him with nothing short of humiliated hostility. He wished himself away from the blasted boy's moody clutches, but knew himself to be as firmly trapped as a moth tangled within the deathly coils of a spider's web...

Trembling fingers lifted the ridiculously beautiful tea-cup and he drank the cold brew in one single, forced gulp. He felt no pleasure in the act. No peace. No sense of either comfort or satisfaction beyond the mere understanding that he... he was _obeying_ the orders of another hated master once more and that would, hopefully, keep someone whom he loved with all of his heart away from harm ...

-For Draco- He thought as he cut open the scones and filled their soft crumb with the rich ruby colored jam -I'm doing all of this for Draco- He reminded himself fiercely every single time that he took a bite and, if the small, delicate treats that he had always delighted in tasted like ashes in his mouth, he was at least honest enough to understand that it had all been his own fault, in a way.

Potter... _Potter_ had _tried_ to give him some leeway, but he had pushed and pushed against the man until he'd virtually forced him to use verbal force. It didn't really matter if the child had intended or not for his request, that he sit back and eat, to be an actual order. It had been one. And, as such, he had to obey it. The humiliation of it all engulfed his senses. Entrapped his mind in a never-ending loop of deep resentment and he sat in his chair, all fierce rigidity and infuriated dignity, like an old warrior who has suddenly found himself to be utterly _unable_ to retaliate, save himself or even simply... _disobey_. Knowing himself to be totally lost and _conquered._ Rightfully _defeated._

The morning went from bad to worse as the hours passed...

The boy huffed in a corner and regaled him intermittently with intense little looks that stressed him beyond endurance. He was bored enough to howl and the ever-increasing tension between them was not doing any favors to his already thin hold over his temper.

His arm throbbed and his head whirled with all kinds of noxious thoughts. He felt maddened with the utter insecurity of not knowing just what, exactly, the child expected from him. Was _this,_ then, to be the sum total of his existence from this day forth? Was he to be slowly driven into the utter indignity of insanity, via the most useless _idleness,_ while the world continued on without his input, just outside of these walls?. The thought alone horrified him to the point of paralyzing terror. He could not imagine any fate worse than this one!.

"Severus?"

Potter's voice called him so suddenly that he startled. Black eyes, veiled with the perfect neutrality of a man used to hiding, confronted the emerald gaze that was trained upon him:

"Yes, Mr. Potter?"

Restless hands pulled at thick locks of short black hair and the boy exhaled air in a stressed half-snort that seemed to explode like the lash of a whip in the thick silence.

"What were you thinking, just now?. You were looking... I don't know. _Sick_"

He blinked slowly. Shocked beyond response by the sudden awareness that the auror could, indeed, read him like a book.

The sole notion was enough to make him break out into a cold sweat. He was used to the idea that the privacy of his own thoughts was impenetrable. He _relished_ the fact that his motivations had never truly been exposed to another, unless he himself had decided to do so. He was used to absolute solitude, in everything that he ever did or contemplated, and the idea that his mind was being plundered...

"It was _you_!" Crystal clear recollection of the events of the day before had arrived with a perfect kind of new understanding to his mind. He remembered the feeling of somebody trying to read him as he'd sat on that park bench. He remembered the fear that he'd felt, the absolute certainty that another's thoughts were in his head...

Potter frowned and he looked straight at him from his perch on the chair that he'd dragged to the window. The bright light that was filtering in through the curtains played on his features, turning that strangely unfamiliar face into a magnificent study of golden-tinged masculine perfection. Emerald eyes shone, like bright jewels, under the raised lines of thick, ebony colored eyebrows.

"Excuse me?"

He heard the carefully modulated question. Detected, without any trouble, the boy's reluctant request for him to expand upon his own cryptic accusation, but his senses could do nothing except stare silently. Straight into the eyes of the child whom he'd been utterly _convinced_ will never, not even after a million years of relentless practice, master the ancient art of Legilimency.

"You _tried_ to breach me, Potter!. Yesterday, while I was out. I sensed someone's attack. You attempted to use Legilimency on me!"

The auror shot out of his chair as if poked with a hot rod. Emerald eyes alive with the kind of outraged fury that only Gryffindors can truly pull off while in the wrong.

"Attack? I was not _attacking_ you, Severus. I was trying to _find_ you!"

Black eyes iced over with the most absolute disdain that they could contain.

"You were trying to find me... yes, of course!. How could I have _forgotten_ the fact that I am a grown up man who has survived TWO BLOODY WARS, no less!. I have absolutely no need to be coddled by the man who has enslaved me, of all people!"

The boy's pale face looked absolutely stricken.

"You don't believe me...? You think that I... that I was trying to _harm_ you?. Gosh! You are so hung up on the ridiculous idea that I've forced that vow on you out of some twisted need for _revenge_ that you just... REFUSE TO SEE WHAT IS MORE THAN BLOODY OBVIOUS!"

He did not like the look of things, not in the slightest. Potter had started to advance towards him and he felt utterly at a disadvantage. Seated, as he still was, on the couch. He did not like the look on that green gaze, either. Nor the extreme paleness of the boy's normally golden colored features.

He pushed himself into a standing position, too. Stood there, back ramrod straight and dark eyes fierce, as he followed the child's approach with teeth-gritting trepidation.

"What is obvious is that you attempted to read my mind without my express permission to do so, Mr. Potter!" He stated with a tone that was sharp enough to draw blood. "What is obvious is that you feel a very... disrespectful... _disregard_ for all: My _privacy._ My age and, also, my abilities!.

You scream and wave your arms and pout incessantly whenever I accuse you of tricking me into your detestable care, but the truth is that, for all your avowals of good faith, you _humiliated_ me IN PUBLIC the very first time that I so much as stepped outside the walls of this... little beige _cage... _that you've placed me in!"

Potter's furious growl resembled so accurately the absolutely hair-raising roar of an enraged lion that Severus took one single step back.

"You are ill!. _Weakened_ to the point that the short journey from St. Mungo's to here drained you completely. You could hardly walk when I brought you home. You almost _collapsed_ on the lift, for Godric's sake!. Then you went ahead and fell asleep on a sofa that's too short for you and I was idiotic enough to decide that fighting with me had already stressed you out so much that I should just... let you be, at least for the night...

You were not looking particularly rested when you woke up and I was reasonably certain that you couldn't have been feeling well enough to even reach the bloody lobby, Severus. Let alone wander around London FOR SEVEN HOURS STRAIGHT!"

He was so incensed that his hands fisted with frustration. His missing wand was a painful reminder of just how... utterly _powerless_ he truly was to respond to this little jerk in exactly the way that he so richly deserved.

"You were _worried_ about me, Mr. Potter?. How... _quaint_. Do you thoughtlessly launch an intrusive mental attack against all of us: little, fragile sheep that you so devotedly care for, Oh, great Saviour, or is this a _privilege_ that you reserve _only_ for Death Eaters?"

The whole couch rose in the air. It shook and trembled about three feet above the ground as the boy shivered with what appeared to be uncontrollable rage. The curtains fluttered, as if trapped within the damaging vortex of a windless, invisible tornado and the very air around them seemed to be charged to capacity with a veritable storm of out of control magic.

"Potter! What do you think you are doing? Master this magic of yours. At once!"

The little brat seemed to have been paralyzed. He stood there: barely five paces away, rooted to the spot as if nailed to the ground. Widened green eyes clashed with his own and he was suddenly informed in an obnoxiously stuttering whisper:

"I _can't_!. There's just... too much of it!. It's refusing my command!"

Severus knew true fear then. Absolute abject terror the likes of which he hadn't had to confront since that ghastly night in the shack...

His senses reeled as he focused intently on all that magic and discovered that it was centered, in turn, upon himself.

There was an ever-increasing pressure that was threatening to crush him as all that power seemed to search for him inside the room. He understood that trying to run away from it would be absolutely pointless. It'll eventually catch up with him and then... then what?...

He could not even begin to enumerate all the ways in which the undirected excess of Potter's own magic could harm him. He, who was specially susceptible to all magic. Who could be, literally, poisoned to death by the toxic venom that was still running through his veins if he were to be exposed to too much sorcery...

His blood ran cold as the essence of the boy's incredibly powerful magic finally zeroed in on him.

Potter gasped and attempted to come near, but he was unable to take a single step closer.

"Severus!"

He stared then, straight into the horrified eyes of the owner of all this energy, as it coiled around him, like a thread intending to enfold him.

He saw it at that point: the absolutely beautiful pure essence that lay at the very core of Potter's Power. It was made of light indeed... It was... pearled and golden, pinkish in a few spots and mostly warm...

It embraced him and covered him, from the top of his head to the very tip of his toes, and he was lifted, like the couch had been before him, up into the thickened air.

He was suspended in the middle of the lounge for what felt like only a second, twirling slowly around and around, above the desperately horrified Potter as the magic rushed all around him. Within him. Ran through his old body as if his clothes and skin, his hair and muscles, his very _bones_ where simply... absent.

Then he felt a sudden jerk. The warm power turned colder when it encountered the ward upon his arm. He felt it poking at the protective binds repeatedly, attempting to unravel the charms that held the shield together with almost violent intent...

The ward gave with a faint crack of broken enchantments and he felt Potter's own energy burrowing underneath it. Sinking into his wounded limb like the probe of a geologist. His arm seemed to be engulfed then by fire: cursed, merciless fire. Fierce pain shot outwards from it, making him writhe in the most God-awful agony...

He gritted his teeth savagely, attempting to ride out the onslaught of this torment, but the strength of it was way fiercer than his own stubborn determination. He knew that he was screaming when his still weakened throat began to throb and he heard Potter almost sobbing underneath him in flailing desperation.

He did not know long it took...

He only knew that one second he was trapped within a web of sheer agony and the next he'd been lovingly lowered back onto the couch...

The magic left as suddenly and speedily as it had arrived and he could do nothing at all but close his dark eyes and attempt to recover from the attack.

He felt sickened to his very stomach and absolutely livid with the little jerk.

"Severus?"

Potter _dared_ to touch his cheek with trembling fingers and he opened his eyes to glare at him with so much hatred that the bastard's hand was pulled hastily away.

"Severus, are you _hurt_?. I'll... I'll... Here!... Let me help you sit up, so that I can see what..."

Wide hands held him once again. Forced his shoulders right off the couch and he, literally, saw red.

How _dare_ the absolute menace grab him in any way after the stunt he'd just pulled off?.

He was so incensed that he growled straight into that young, pale face with murderous venom. His hands coiled within the cloth of Potter's shirt and he all but lifted the brat half off the floor, in order to whisper menacingly at him:

"If you ever, EVER AGAIN!, perform any kind of unwelcome magic upon my person, Harry Potter, I swear on your mother's memory that I shall dedicate the rest of my miserable existence to the pleasurable task of making you pay very dearly indeed for that transgression!. Am I making myself clear?"

The boy swallowed visibly. Utterly terrified green eyes gazed up at him with so much dread that he felt suddenly sickened. He could not tolerate seeing those awful emotions within these beautiful orbs that were so reminiscent of Lily's...

Perfectly disgusted with himself, with the boy and with the whole sorry drama he pushed the creature away from him and began the task of raising.

That's when the auror seized him again. Golden fingers curled around his bony wrist and held him immobile, the strength inherent in the touch was forceful enough for him to understand that he'd never be free of it, unless the boy himself decided to release him.

"Potter, what on Earth...?"

He never actually finished that sentence. It was swallowed by gob-smacked surprise when the creature blatantly interrupted him:

"Severus, _look_ at yourself!. LOOK!. You've just... _pushed_ me down to the floor with _both_ hands!. And you were _using_ your left arm to help yourself up from the couch. Your arm... your arm is _healed_!"

Ebony colored eyes widened impossibly and his gaze lowered down to stare straight at the wrist held within the fierce circle of Potter's fingers.

He felt no _pain_ on it at all, he could...

He pulled it away from the auror's hold and turned the limb this way and that in the space between them. It felt completely at ease!. There was not a twinge of pain to be found anywhere... The broken bones that had so stubbornly refused to be repaired by Skele-Gro had been forced to surrender to the power of Potter's wayward magic. The brat's uncontrolled energy had decided to... _heal_ him, when it could have caused him so much _harm_ instead...

He was so perfectly astounded that he turned his dark eyes upon that glowing, exultant face and asked the question that was persistently hammering his mind with a voice that was awash with wonder:

"Why, Potter?... _Why_ would your magic do this, when it had the chance to _destroy_ me so completely?"

The boy shook his head almost wearily. Bright green eyes dimmed, somehow, on the receiving end of that utterly puzzled question.

"It did it because it _could_, Severus. Because it _wanted_ to do it. Because you are not my enemy and I don't hate you enough to see you suffer. Not in any way!. Not if I can help it.

I think my magic _knows_ where my heart lies when it comes to _you_ and was _trying_ to _help_ me... "

TBC...


	16. Chapter 16

**THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 16**

"It lifted you in the air and shook you like a rag doll?. Hmmm!. That's really... _intriguing_"

Luc's thoughtful caressing of his perfectly shaved jaw gave him the shivers. He decided to correct immediately the terrible misconception that had caught the fancy of his best friend's twisted mind:

"It did not "shake me like a doll," Luc. It... it..." He faltered when no suitable word came to his mind, other that the most _unfortunate_ of choices.

His cheeks colored with discomfited chagrin and his gaze lowered towards the table.

His thoughts whirled with the disconcerting acknowledgement that he could not understand the peculiarly _affectionate_ behavior of Potter's magic towards him. He had felt the same awareness of fond _warmth_ coming off the thing during that accursed Wizard's Oath that he'd been tricked into swearing...

"It...?"

He frowned, having become so tangled in his own thoughts that he'd forgotten the awful mistake he'd just committed. He'd been _idiotic_ enough to open his big mouth in front of Luc, no less. He should have known better. Attempting to clarify his friend's erroneous assumption had been a very unfortunate choice. Luc was curious and well learned, he liked... No. He was _obsessed_ with puzzles: magical, muggle, elven, goblin... The man didn't much care where they came from, as long as they contained an enigma of some kind. It had always been like this. _Always!._ Any quirk of magic that even _hinted_ at a mystery, no matter how small, attracted his aristocratic friend like a moth and he'd just... _waved_ the promise of an intriguingly new magical behavior in front of a man whom he _knew_ to be curious enough to pull down every book in that vast collection of his, in tireless search for an explanation!.

"Severus?. You were saying...?"

-Oh, Dear!- Luc had caught his hesitation and was waiting, like a hound who'd scented blood, for his boundless curiosity to be satisfied in precise and gory a detail.

"It... It enfolded me" He finally offered in so defensive a tone that all three of his blond companions lifted equally annoying sets of haughty, golden eyebrows.

"It enfolded you? As in... it _embraced_ you, Severus?" Cissy's question broke the silence with that gentle request for clarification and he'd never detested the sound of her voice more, in the whole of his life.

At the opposite side of Potter's dining table, Draco proceeded to spit a mouthful worth of tea back into his cup with unusual inelegance.

"Potter's magic _dared_ to _hug_ you?. I can't believe the boldness of the man!"

A sudden moue of pain contorted his godchild's features and Severus' own eyebrow rose, guessing that Cissy had kicked the boy, hard, under the table. His assumption was proved correct by the shocked hiss that followed:

"Awww... Mother!"

"You should not speak thus of our host, Draco. It is a detestable sign of ill breeding that I shall not tolerate in these circumstances!. We _owe_ that man too much to disparage him in public.

It is even less _appropriate_ here, within the walls of his own home, for Salazar's sake!"

Luc decided to stay out of the argument and, eventually, the whole topic was delicately ignored, quietly brushed under the carpet in order to keep a dignified peace between mother and son.

Severus could have kissed Cissy for her prissy formality. She'd just saved him from a fate worse than death at the hands of her husband's legendary curiosity, after all.

"How on Earth did it manage to cure you, Severus?. I have it on good authority that Healer Jones tried every trick in the book to get your arm fixed.

Lucius here and Draco, too, were right terrors to the poor woman and don't even start me on Potter's ghastly behavior... It was an absolute circus in that emergency room!" Cissy shivered delicately and her glare, so fiercely directed towards the sheepish men of her family, managed to express better than any words could ever have the extent of her displeasure with their actions.

Draco shrugged his shoulders elegantly:

"I was only asking her about the potions, Mother!. And the effectiveness of all those Gaelic charms that she was using. And, _maybe,_ I got a little _worried_ about the accuracy of that contraption of hers that was constantly beeping. Adamantly _insisting_ that Severus's magic was right _there_ when we all could plainly see that it was, actually, _missing_"

"Draco!"

Luc's incensed bark halted his son's words abruptly. They all froze and a thick, uneasy, silence fell over the table. Every eye turned towards him then. Equally chagrined expressions appeared on all three aristocratic faces as his closest friends on Earth, his only family, really, waited for his reaction to his godson's lack of tact.

"I'm sorry, Godfather. I wasn't trying to insult you, I swear!. I was just... It's what _happened,_ for Merlin's sake!"

"I am not offended, Draco. I..." He exhaled through his nose, irked with frustration. He'd never had much time for things like this: careful, painful talks about... _emotions._

Feelings, of any kind, and all their mystifying accompanying concessions, were just... too _complicated_ for him. They _terrified_ him.

He was, generally, too shy to deal with anything of the kind out in the open. Too unaware of his own emotions to pay them any attention most of the time...

He was the kind of man who wouldn't _know_ how he truly felt about something. Or even someone, unless it was pointed out to him with foot-long glowing letters.

He used to be _different._ Almost a lifetime ago...

But having perfect awareness of his feelings, of his likes and dislikes, had brought only misery to a teenager as conscious of his own physical failings as he'd been. Confidence in himself had never been a strength of his, unless there were potions involved or the dark arts...

"I appreciate your blunt approach, Draco. It's much better than everyone else's infernal tiptoeing around the issue"

"Thanks a lot, Severus. See if I _bother_ to protect your sensibilities next time!"

"Lucius!" Cissy's fierce glare reduced the one that her husband was directing at Severus to the realms of the pathetic. They all flinched with equal shivers of wary respect at her increasing discontent with them. She was a Black of Pure Blood. She'd been Bella's little sister!. And what she knew about the darker side of hexing could fill continent upon continent and still need more space...

There was a small beat of silence. Twinkling cutlery being uncomfortably used to mix this cup of tea or that other one, to add another spoonful of sugar here or a splash of cream there... Until Draco broke the uncomfortable impasse:

"So... Let's see if I've got this right, Godfather: Potter healed you, without actually _meaning_ to do it, and now _both_ of you are agonizing over it because you can't explain how he did it. Is that it?"

His jaw went rigid with the effort of suppressing a frustrated little rant of his own. It wasn't his boy's fault that he tended to sound slightly condescending, that was just a Malfoy trait. Luc did the same all the time...

"Yes, Draco. I believe that's _it_" He replied, a bit sharply.

"Why do we care about the _how_ of it, anyway?. Your arm is fully functional again, you no longer spark like a blue firework every time that someone performs magic around you. We can go ahead and bring you to the Manor. You'll be _home,_ where you belong, Godfather!. And we'll be able to concentrate properly on figuring out what to do about your power without having all these _gryffindors_ muddling the waters. That's all that matters, isn't it?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Draco. We can't _ignore_ what's happened. The whole thing is... just too _intriguing!._ It's making me _itch_ to get back home. I can't wait to grab our copy of "The Maladies of Theorpillius Critt" I seem to remember that he suffered, at one point or another, from acute resistance to healing magic... I wonder how the Medics of the time managed to _overcome_ his difficulties"

"Theorpillius Critt was an absolute nutcase, Father!. He only became famous because he was the kind of hypochondriac who would torment his healers, with one complain or another, to the point that they performed test upon test on him until he became, literally, "allergic" to healing magic. I can't understand why anyone, least of all you, would _want_ to read a whole encyclopedia-sized tome on the nature of his delusions!"

Luc's intense gray eyes were afire with the most disheartening enthusiasm that Severus had seen on them since the time Kurtis Kolch dared him to find a cure for the Pelut i Bruta* Hex. He'd never had to wade through as many dusty tomes, every single one of them written in a cumbersome variation of ancient Latin, since!.

"It's not about the man himself, Draco. It's about the _magic_. He was _allergic_ to it, don't you see? Just like Severus here.

That whole arm was _impervious_ to Skele-Gro. It reacted so badly to magic that we _had_ to put your poor Godfather through the trauma of inhabiting a magic dampening room. Even though we _knew_ that, by doing so, we were making it impossible for him to attempt any kind of re-connexion with his own power. We all tore our hair out, trying to fix it!. The healers were stumped. None of your precious potions managed to help. Granger _failed_ in her attempt to find a solution to this blasted conundrum. And I... I have _lost_ precious sleep reading ridiculously occult treatises on aversion to healing until my eyes got crossed!.

I've been trying to figure this out night after night and today I found out that Potter, _POTTER_!, beat me to the solution with nothing but a spot of _accidental_ _magic_. It's just too _humiliating_ to be endured, Draco!. I shall not let stone unturned until I find out _how_ he did it!"

Luc's little rant had left them all kind of deflated. And slightly peeved at Potter. It was _typical_ of the blasted _gryffindors_ to take a pass on the hard work and just... stampede their way towards a solution, claiming along the way all the accolades that, by rights, belonged to others.

"Yeah... that kind of sucks, actually."

"Draco!"

"Sorry, Mother!"

Cissy glared balefully at her son and they all froze until she sighed with resigned discontentment. Her soft hand rose to muss up the artfully curled mass of white-blond hair that cascaded around her lovely face with a carefully portrayed weariness.

"How did he _lose_ that control of his, Severus?. That's the part I'm failing to understand in all of this. I've seen Potter under pressure and he is always as cool as a cucumber"

Severus blinked at that, astonished incredulity filling his dark eyes with absolute disconcertion. A million and one memories of the brat's angry face, flushed to the point of almost apoplexy, flitted through his mind as he just sat there and... _gaped._

"I can't even begin to imagine where you've got that impression from, Cissy. Potter has the worst kind of hair-triggered temper that I've ever seen. The little jerk is an absolute menace of the worst kind, he's been that way for as long as I've known him and I'm starting to believe that he will cause his own demise, someday soon, while in the throes of one of his own hissy fits!"

All three looked at him with equal amounts of alarmed befuddlement.

"Severus... Are you _sure_ that you are talking about Potter?. Harry Potter?. The Saviour of the Wizarding World and all that? "

Luc's puzzling comment drew his eyebrows together, he could not understand the little looks that they were giving him.

"Why?. Is there more than one of them?" He snarled, absolutely infuriated with their ridiculous reaction. "Of course I'm talking about Potter!. You all _saw_ the way he screamed at me the other night. It was like being attacked by a demented banshee!"

Draco shrugged his elegant shoulders in a small dismissive gesture.

"That unfortunate display... Yes, I _agree_ with you there, Godfather. But then we'll also have to admit that he'd been out of his little gryffindor mind for most of that morning already. Better men have cracked under the same kind of pressure"

Luc's head shook in a disparaging gesture and he stated his opinion on the matter without much mercy for their absent host:

"He was acting like an idiot!. Flooed the Manor and started to scream the most nonsensical drivel I've heard since the Dark Lord himself. He was _insisting_ on speaking to you immediately. _Demanded_ that we hand you over. I've never been subjected to so many brainless accusations in so small a span of time!. Why he expected us to have you when he knew that you couldn't tolerate magic, I'll never understand...

Then I had to sit through a whole half-hour rant on how stubborn you are and let's not forget that ridiculous bout of speculation over which floo destination you'd chose to disappear into. It was one of the longest hours of my life!.

To top it all off, I was forced to _suffer_ the _indignity_ of suggesting that he double-check my own perfectly accurate assessment with Granger, before I could convince him that you couldn't have traveled _magically_ for the very same reasons that made it _impossible_ for you to have come to us, in the first place!"

Silence followed Luc's outraged words, settling over them like a stifling wet blanket.

"You came _here_ of your own free will. Didn't you, Godfather?" Draco's beautiful gray eyes were now narrowed and suspicious. He looked pale and his hands were curled so tightly around the handle of his cup that his knuckles had turned white.

Severus turned perfectly blanc eyes towards him before pronouncing every word clearly:

"Of course I did. He offered this flat as an alternative to a magical location. I didn't _want_ to put your father through the trouble of installing a magical vacuum over the Manor, Draco. You _know_ that. We've had this conversation enough times already"

Challenge flashed within the gaze of the child he loved so dearly:

"Then _why_ was he so convinced that you'd vanished?. Why was he so adamant that you had managed to find some magical means to disappear?. Why would he _assume_ that you'd come to us without bothering to inform him, Godfather? Now that I think back on it... He was kind of certain that we were _hiding_ you."

Luc's aristocratic features had turned to stone and the fierce growl that escaped his pale throat sounded like the explosion of loud thunder.

"That little _bastard_!..." The chair that he'd been seated at crashed to the floor with an almighty bang when he jumped to his feet. His chest lowered forward, over the wide expanse of the table, in order to stare directly into Severus' own eyes:

"It was an Oath!. Wasn't it?. That's what happened at Hogwarts. You were perfectly _fine,_ after we put your through that ritual. "A few more hours of rest. A day or two, at the most, and you'd have been fit enough to sit up and take visitors" That's what Pomfrey said...

I've been reading the _wrong_ books all along!. I was certain that Potter had _mispronounced_ a word on the Parseltongue incantation. I _assumed_ that he'd put you through this trauma by _mistake _when we were trying to purge the wound on your neck, or that you'd reacted badly to the magic and, somehow, it had taken your body a few hours to show the first signs of it...

But no. No. That would have never resulted in you _losing_ your magic, unless he'd specifically requested it. Nor would you have ever agreed to live in his home under _normal_ circumstances. Not this _calmly_, anyway...

You still distrust him. Don't you, Severus?. So many things have changed since the war, but you haven't yet learned about them. By Salazar!... How could I have been so _blind_?"

Luc's formidable mind was now engaged. It was going along the right tracks, too.

Severus sat in his chair as if turned to stone. His thoughts buzzed, trying to find a way to still the flow of sudden understanding that lit those clever eyes with terrifying awareness. His friend was like a hound in times like this, all sheer brilliance and ruthless intellect. It was the reason why their former Lord had valued Luc's opinion above all others, once his mind was ensnared by the allure of finding the perfect solution to a problem Luc could be terrifyingly logical and very rarely wrong.

Speculative gray eyes were studying his features with a frightening kind of focus. Silence reigned and Severus realized that they were waiting to hear what he would say. There was nothing he could add, though, nothing at all. And his obvious reluctance only spurred Luc into further, even more damaging, speculation:

"I should have seen it sooner, Severus. I can't believe I missed it!...

Your body accepted no magic. None whatsoever. But it allowed him to apparate you straight to St. Mungo's, after you collapsed... It only allowed the healers to put that ward on your arm because it had some fancy, auror-restricted protections on it. Things that he added to it, himself, at the last minute. It allowed his magic, HIS!, to fix what had been broken because he'd caused it to break in the first place!.

Your powers have been _linked, _that's how he managed to access your Core. Isn't it, Severus?. He... he must have forced you to swear a vow of some kind. A Pledge of Allegiance, a Life-debt contract or even a Wizard's Oath...

Dear Salazar... he did!. Didn't he?. He must _have,_ it's the _only_ thing that makes _sense..._"

Severus had frozen with shock. He felt as if Luc had plunged him straight into the Arctic ocean by asking him that question.

He was numb from the outside in: mind and tongue and muscles, too. He was perfectly _unable_ to respond to that unwelcome query. He'd sworn secrecy to the brat: SECRECY!. And here was Luc poking his perfect, little nose into things that were better left alone.

A deep sigh escaped his lips and he blinked slowly. He could sense that the others were becoming increasingly frustrated with him and understood that he had... maybe three seconds... to respond before either Draco or Luc gave him up for a lost cause and started to search for an easier source of information.

They'd go to Potter himself. POTTER... Who'd taken one look at his visitors and left them to it, in a show of tactfulness that Severus hadn't been expecting. The auror had retired, presumably to his own room, almost at once. Generously granting him the courtesy of some privacy with his visitors without fuss of any kind ...

Severus didn't want to find out what that oath could do if Potter were to become convinced that he'd broken their terms, the very idea made him feel dizzy with dread. His lips trembled slightly, with the kind of desperation that he very rarely showed, and he responded to his friend with unusual sharpness:

"I'm afraid that I can't give you an answer, Luc. I had _reasons_ for accepting Potter's offer. Reasons that I'm unable to share with you, at the moment. I _demand_ that you back off from this. Now!.

You must do it for my own good, do you _understand_?. Magic is, sometimes, too literal in what it believes to be a breaching of terms... DO. NOT. PURSUE. _THIS,_ AT ALL!"

"No way!" Draco's growl broke the thick tension and he'd already shot out of his chair and managed to take two steps towards the corridor before his father's frosty tone halted his exit.

"Son... wait a second"

The smoke colored eyes that had accompanied him, through some of the darkest moments of his life, were now glimmering with a shattered kind of understanding. With a fury so profound that it turned their usual pale beauty into a veritable storm of diamond-cold harshness.

"Secrecy... There must have been an element of _secrecy_ to the oath and now You. Are. Not. _Allowed._ To. Discuss. It. Am I right, Severus?"

Draco gasped, looking absolutely stricken. He was looking straight at him through a fine film of bright tears that turned his gray gaze into the very definition of desolation.

Severus had never been so ashamed of himself in front of these proud people, he felt so wretched that he wished the floor would open up and swallow him whole.

The tense muscles of his neck couldn't support his head any longer and he lowered it, in humiliated mortification, towards the table. His dark hair fell around his face as the ebony locks swung with the movement and he was grateful for the flimsy, obscuring shield that they provided him with.

"I'm going to _fix_ this!. I. Am. Going. To, my friend. Now that I _know_ what really happened it'll be easier to figure out why you reacted that badly to a simple oath.

I can't believe that idiot kept _this_ from me!. I could have been searching for the right solution all along... We'll bring your magic back, Severus, and when we do, Dear Salazar!... when we _do_ we are going to find a way to make Potter regret having even _thought_ of putting you through this kind of misery!"

Luc's incensed whisper forced his head back up. He knew that his ebony gaze was filled with shadows and his pale, ashen visage clearly stressed, but he blinked in what he hoped his companions wouldn't perceive as heartbroken defeat and attempted, quite unsuccessfully, by the look of things, to conjure a weak smile out of... somewhere.

"Let it be, Luc. Please!. I beg of you, just... LET. IT. BE!.

It'll be best for everyone involved if you forget this conversation altogether"

Mutinous resolution flashed within two eerily similar pairs of gray eyes, beautifully matching the outraged expressions painted on the faces of both Malfoy's. These two were among the most stubborn men he'd ever met and Severus understood then, with disheartening certainty, that they'll _try_ something eventually...

"Has he meant you any harm? Have any of his demands managed to... hurt you in any way, Severus?"

He heard the question clearly enough, but the answer simply escaped him at the moment.

Honesty demanded of him to respond with the most assertive negative that he could possibly produce,

but his suspicious nature reminded him of the monster who'd threatened Draco. Of the man who had so easily _tricked_ him. Of the fact that he didn't really know Lily's child and, most probably, had never truly known him...

"I..." His voice faltered as he struggled to form words. It was then that he realized he didn't really know how to explain Potter's bizarre behavior.

He picked up the ridiculously exquisite tea-cup that the boy had given him and started twirling it around in his fingers, pondering Cissy's strange reaction to it.

A smile, equal parts secretive and pleased, had appeared on her lips when he'd dragged the whole set out of the cupboard: silver cutlery, teapot and all corresponding items. Every single one a perfect match to the breathtaking beauty of this delicate cup...

Humiliation had befallen him soon after, though. Once it became puzzlingly obvious that Potter owned no other such items. They hadn't been able to find another cup or even a few glasses. Nothing usable, anyway, apart from the boy's own, and ghastly, coffee mug...

Luc had been forced to transfigure three extra china sets from a few cookies crumbs. Cookies that had been _intended_ as a gift for him, but had ended up being sacrificed to provide his visitors with the bare necessities for their impromptu afternoon tea.

"He gave me _this _and all these ridiculous silver cutlery, too" He finally muttered gruffly, thoughtful dark eyes fixed on the lovely object that he held.

"You've seen the flat, haven't you?. The whole place is... _bare,_ but if you were to set foot in my own room... It looks as if it belongs to a different house altogether"

Black eyes zeroed in on his friend's face, flustered perplexity making them look unusually vulnerable and his voice, when he finally resumed speaking, was lowered into a bewildered whisper:

"There's no comfort that I lack. Not one, Luc!. There are huge high-backed chairs. My bed is big enough for a whole Quidditch team. A radiator keeps that one room warm round the clock...

The desk is made out of polished mahogany. There's parchment of the highest quality and quills just like _yours_. There's ink, too. Inside a pot that looks as if it should belong to the bloody Minister of Magic...

He's bought my favorite jam from it's original source, apparently. That's in Leeds, For Merlin's sake!. And he brews my tea Every. Bloody. Morning, with the same kind of focus that I'd use to mix Veritaserum!" He shuddered, finally coming to a halt. Every anxious word echoed around his rigid figure for a second before vanishing into the stunned silence that followed.

He was shocked with himself, unable to understand why he felt so agitated about being treated... _decently _for once!.

He was more than merely confused, though. He was truly spooked by the overwhelming edginess that gripped him every time that he thought about the blasted brat's inexplicable behavior.

"Why do you trust him, Luc?. I can't _understand_ it!. You all seem to have come to some kind of peace with him. It's so strange to see you here, in his house... I _remember_ laughing about his idiocy with you. I must have heard _you_ and the Dark Lord plot his murder together about a million times!.

And you, Draco, how many times did I have to pull the two of you away from each other's throats at school?. He used _Sectumsempra_ on you, for Merlin's sake!"

His friend considered him carefully. Puzzlingly neutral features revealing surprisingly little of Luc's inner thoughts.

"I"d have told you just this morning that I trust him because he means you no harm, Severus. But now... I am not so sure any more. I can't _believe_ he tried this!. An oath... a _forced_ oath by the look of things. It's just... So _stupid_!... _Why_ would he _do_ such a thing? The more I think on it the less sense it makes. What the Hell did he demand, anyway?. Not _knowing_ the details is driving me up the wall!"

Severus contemplated that response carefully. He was surprised by Luc's relatively mild reaction, his friend tended to be ruthlessly vengeful, at the best of times. The fact that he seemed to be merely frustrated indicated that he truly believed Potter to be... ultimately _harmless_.

"That doesn't answer my question, Luc. And I, definitely, can't answer yours.

I only know that I almost died resenting that child with all my heart. I woke up and he was _there._ I _assumed_ that he wanted to harm me. Avenge the things I did during the war, but... there's no denying that his uncontrolled magic decided to _heal_ my arm. It could have hurt me so badly and yet...IT DIDN'T!, I can't get my head around the idea...

This is about intentions, Luc: Potter's intentions. We both know that magical results, whether they start life directed by a wand or not, follow the same basic rule: the intention of the wizard _controls_ the

magic..."

It was immediately apparent that his friend disagreed:

"What he ultimately intends is beside the point, Severus. He has done _this_!. He can't be _allowed_ to get away with it. I can't _ignore_ his behavior. I won't!.

I'll find a way around this vow and he'll be forced to deal with you like a sane adult. Trapping you into some sort of _arrangement_ will not give him what he wants, I can't believe he even tried it!. You just... Wait. Until. I. Put. My. Hands. On. That... IDIOT!"

As usual, it took Cissy's unique brand of reasoning to bring her men to heel.

"Severus has made himself perfectly clear, Lucius!. The last thing that he needs is for us stick our oar in and aggravate his predicament even further. We could be putting _him_ in _danger_ by stretching the parameters of a vow that we don't fully understand. Confronting Potter in any way may cause untold harm to our friend!"

Her assessment was absolutely spot on, of course. There was nothing the Malfoy men could do, so they sat rigidly on their chairs and... _fumed_!.

The tension that rose around them was thick enough to be held between bare fingers.

The tea that Draco had prepared cooled slowly as it remained, utterly forgotten, within their cups like a pleasure that belonged far away, to happier people...

A sense of absolute despondency fell over them. Trapping them within it, threatening to drown them...

It was Cissy who rallied first. Taking a deep breath, she turned around and stared at him with her soft blue eyes. A pale, trembling smile was fixed on her lips and her voice, when she finally spoke, was careful and gentle:

"_Where_ did you go last Sunday, Severus?. You never said. Luc told Potter to leave the histrionics aside and just... wait you out. We were certain that you'd be back within the hour, only... you _weren't. _It was hard, you know?. Explaining to all those _gryffindors_ that you are the kind of man who takes care of himself... None of them _listened_ to us!. I've never been so exasperated with so many people at once!. They even called the muggle police, didn't you hear all the racket?"

He shrugged uncomfortably. Black eyes blindly contemplating the table as his mind returned to the events of last Sunday...

"I saw the police, but it didn't cross my mind that I was their target. Why should it have?. I've got nothing to do with them. I assumed that something had happened in town, something humongous!. That some idiot had stolen the Queen's Jewels or the like..."

"How is it _possible_ to have the whole special division of the muggle police searching every street for you, picture in hand, and still evade them?. The kind of skill that you showed out there has had the lot of them baffled since it happened, Godfather!. They believe that you are some sort of... super agent, like that Jess Bob of theirs"

Draco's comment made him frown. He'd done _nothing_ out of the ordinary. He'd reacted on instinct alone, following the same reflexes that had helped him survive the blasted war.

"I didn't react very favorably to their presence, Draco. Police remind me so much of the aurors that I just... kept away from them"

His godson looked at him with a rueful kind of compassion:

"You are going to have to stop doing that, you know?. You happen to be about the shiniest pillar there is to wizarding society right now. If it ever came to be known that you don't trust the aurors... I don't know how the public might react. This thing with the muggle police has been enough of a fiasco as it is!"

He was so shocked that he stammered like an idiot:

"Shiny... pillar... of society?... _Wizarding_ _society_?"

Luc snorted. Cissy smiled. And his boy... his boy just looked at him, soft gray eyes alive with the kind of sly amusement that used to give him a headache, back in the days when his life had still been... _normal_.

"Yes, Godfather. Having _you_ in the family has given us more clout nowadays than being THE MALFOYS... How does _that_ feel?"

He almost choked on his own saliva, so great was his astonishment.

"You _must_ be _joking_, Draco. The very idea is... _Preposterous_!"

"Preposterous or not it is the truth, Severus. There has been a media frenzy since the severity of your condition was "leaked" to the press.

It didn't help any that Potter went over to Azkaban and arrested healer Peterssen on the spot.

When you bring down a man like that in so public a way, under charges of torturing an innocent civilian, no less, things have a tendency to... _reach_ the worst kind of ears.

The connexion to you was so obvious that it immediately became front-page news.

Add to that the fact that your Award Ceremony was canceled twice, on account of your ill health, and you have the perfect cocktail of outrage and melodrama that the Prophet loves to print."

The most terrible anxiety seized him then. He detested the very concept of having a bunch of strangers follow his every action. The idea that his life was a matter of public interest revolted him to the point of stomach-twisting nausea.

"I had no idea..."

"Of course you didn't, Severus. Harry worked very hard to keep you away from the crazed masses. He went as far as placing you under auror protection, after that overenthusiastic fan of yours managed get into your hospital room and tried to feed you grapes... I've never seen that boy so furious!" Cissy's soft hand covered his own in a reassuring gesture, if she'd been aiming to calm him then her failure was abysmal. He looked at her with horrified dark eyes.

"I remember that. I thought she was a nurse!. I even spoke to her, told her off for her inappropriate behavior before she left the room in a flood of tears"

Luc's aristocratic features twisted with disdain.

"She's made a killing selling that story. It has been publicized even in France!

How you ate fruit form her hands with your thin lips...

How your dark eyes, so lustrous that they resemble the deep night, focused on her and gave her tiny shivers...

How your wounded voice, rough like the sound of a waterfall, _caressed_ her senses until she was so overwhelmed with lust that she dissolved into a flood of frustrated tears and was forced to abandon your side...

Honestly!. The ghastly poetry alone is enough to turn any sane man's stomach!"

To describe Severus's reaction as merely horrified would had been nothing short of... blasphemy. He was actually truly _traumatized_!. Rendered speechless by the abject humiliation of hearing himself described in those truly distasteful terms.

Shocked lips parted and he stuttered out the one word that horrified him the most:

"Lust?"

Luc's sharp nod of confirmation was, of course, absolutely unwelcome. He could not even begin to imagine what could be _worse_ than the agony of knowing himself to be the object of such mockery.

He'd been ugly like dark sin all of his life. His every yearning for affection, during his teenager years, had been violently squashed upon discovery.

He'd been laughed at, by the likes of Sirius black and company, to the point of heart-crushing degradation. He'd been called unthinkable things. Reminded again and again, mercilessly, that he was fated to live, and die, in utter loneliness because... who would ever want an ugly thing like him?.

And now... to have perfect strangers attempt to use his unfortunate physique as their weapon of choice to ridicule him even further... It was simply _intolerable_!.

"How dare she?" He growled so fiercely that even Cissy flinched.

Draco looked at him and smiled with smug satisfaction:

"Potter's tangled her in piles of paperwork. Every time she opens her big mouth he sends Weasley right out to bring her in. He's accused her of stalking. Of impersonating a staff-member of St. Mungo's. Of entering a private room illegally. Of putting your life at risk. Of breaching your privacy. Of using unsanctioned descriptions of your likeness...

If it's legal and you can name it then he is already tried it!. The whole ministry is agog with that little tug of war. They even have bets going on, Severus. I can't _believe_ there are idiots out there mad enough to bet _against_ Potter!.

Having Hermione "The-Lioness-Of-The-Law" Granger giving you pointers when it comes to defend your friends from the clutches of some greedy, little liar has to be the _ultimate_ _weapon_"

He felt a headache coming. A migraine of troll-like proportions was trying to blind him while he sat there, staring dumbly at Draco and feeling absolutely livid with fury.

"Potter has no right!" He exploded finally, vexed beyond patience "He is single-handedly attempting to ridicule me into the grave!"

Cissy stirred beside him, pretty blue eyes fixed on that ridiculous tea-cup:

"Don't be so hard on him, Severus!. I think it's kind of sweet, really. A tad over the top, of course. And really, really _bold_. Too bold, maybe... but sweet nevertheless. He _tries_ so hard, the poor dear!... Does he not?"

She could have spoken ancient Hungarian, for all the sense she made to him.

He blinked, absolutely confused. Feeling nothing short of unbalanced by her sly expression. Attempting to unfurl the convoluted nuances of her strange statement only increased the power of his headache.

"He tries hard? I don't think I follow you, Cissy. He does _nothing_ all day except being... _odd_!.

He makes no sense whatsoever. He has more mood swings than a pregnant woman!.

He is considerate to the point of driving me spare, one second, and the next goes ahead and _explodes_ into a rage for the strangest things..."

Irritatingly, Cissy decided to ignore his obvious exasperation.

"Really?. What kind of things make him mad, Severus?"

He frowned as he thought back over his arguments with Potter.

Looking back on them he could see a strange and very troubling pattern beginning to emerge. Most of their fights had been triggered by his own lack of trust in the boy...

The auror reacted rather badly to Severus' perverse need to rile him. He seemed to detest being ignored or not taken into account... but the absolutely foolproof way to get up Potter's nose was to allow his own instinctive need to relay only on himself to come to the surface...

"He... he wants to _help_. Or so he insists on screaming at me..."

Draco growled at that, gray eyes turning fierce with a vexed kind of affront that Severus found comforting.

"He _screams_ at you, Godfather?. How dare he?. I'll rip his tongue off..."

Cissy halted the rest of that rant impatiently:

"Draco, Sshh!. You are as bad as Severus when it comes to things like this. Can neither of you see that Potter is just... _eager_?"

Now godfather and godchild seemed flummoxed, equal looks of mystified befuddlement seized their features.

"Eager?. Eager for what, Mother?"

She smiled brightly, beautifully and... utterly contentedly.

She looked towards her husband and they both exchanged a suspiciously satisfied little look of understanding that forced something very much like terrified nausea to settle in the pit of Severus' stomach.

It was Luc, though, the one who finally answered.

His gaze shone like flawless diamonds as his elegant hand reached out for the stupid cup.

The delicate porcelain was held within those richly ringed fingers with a touch of reverence and his friend's voice sounded both, soft and slightly awed, when it broke the silence.

"You said it yourself, my friend: Intention, Severus...

Intention is at the heart of all magical things. There is nothing in our world more magical than what I believe is happening here. It is _not_ what the boy _says_ that is important, but what he keeps back.

I think he is _trying_ to show you, instead of simply... telling you, because he _knows_ that you won't believe his words. At least not yet.

He is eager to serve, my friend. Eager to serve _you!._ And the only things stopping the two of you from actually understanding one another are your own refusal to view him as an ally and this _inexplicable_ vow that he's forced upon you..."

TBC...

* A/N: Pelut i Bruta roughly translates as Hairy and Foul.


	17. Chapter 17

_**THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 17 **_

His heartbeat seemed to halt at the sight of that box. It was a polished thing made out of Agarwood. It's almost intoxicating sandalwood-like aroma helped him immediately identify the carefully engraved material as the most precious wood in the world.

Luc had attempted, many years ago, to have a very special jewelery box made out of it for his wife, but had been forced to abandon that idea when confronted with the serious amount of red tape that his request for the amount of wood needed to complete the project had encountered.

Black-market prizes for the thing were so ludicrous that even his extravagant friend had decided to back down and shelve the whole idea:

"It's almost twice as expensive as gold, Severus, a piece of muggle wood, for Salazar's sake!" That had been the last he'd heard on the topic and to find himself now on the receiving end of the very same thing held him riveted to the spot, utterly transfixed.

"Severus?. Is there something _wrong?"_

Potter's voice reached him as if through a wall built on bricks made out of absolute disconcertion and hopeless confusion.

His dark eyes raked over the exquisite beauty of the dark box. Read, with dumbstruck disbelief, the

lovely legend that had been delicately etched onto the lid in sweeping curling script:

What wealth of grace rests here belongs to Severus Snape...

He understood nothing of it, found no sense to either the words or the gesture...

What truly held him nailed to the spot, though, was the suspicion: the overwhelming certainty that he'd find his wand within... and that idea was so much like _hope_ that he could not cope with the _possibility_ of it being crushed into unthinkable disappointment. Not with this matter...

His fingers lifted the exquisite box and hurled it with trembling gracelessness as far away from himself as he could manage. It slid across the dinning table, where they were still seated, with a hissed whoosh of wood on wood.

Potter's emerald eyes seemed dismayed. They were widened with hurt. Limpid and bright. A perfect rendition of flawlessly genuine sincerity enfolded in wounded disappointment...

For the very first time he realized how heartbreakingly beautiful the boy's eyes really were. How truly unlike his mother's that green gaze had become. These were eyes that _knew_ sorrow in a way that hers had never done...

"Why won't you open it, Severus?. I promise you that the contents won't harm you in any way"

He could not find within himself strength enough to form a single word... so he pushed his chair backwards with an almighty screech. The jarring echoes of that utterly ghastly sound filled the awful silence as he stood and retreated one step. Two. Three...

His ebony gaze remained fixed on that wooden box all along.

He was on the very verge of bolting when the auror finally caught onto his imminent intention to flee.

The young face hardened into a mask that was fierce, determined and about as yielding as the ancient granite that had built Hogwarts:

"You are going to have to _answer_ my dammed question, Severus Snape, and you are going to do it right _now!"_

His retreat halted, as if he'd been petrified. He knew that his eyes must look wild. His breathing was heavy, ragged. He felt _lost_ to all rationale, devoid of all _control..._

He understood that he was truly overreacting, but he could _not_ bring himself back towards _calm._ It was too much. Simply... _too_ _much!._ He could _not_ deal with the situation in any shape or form.

"You _must_ let me be, Potter!. I have no reason to offer you an explanation for my every action. You can not _force_ _me_ to do it, I have a right to my own privacy!" His growl wavered as he grappled with the overflowing sense of dread that was surging through his mind like a tsunami.

He understood that he was about a second away from a shameful meltdown. There was nothing that he wanted more than to scape this blasted room. He _needed_ to hide far away from those all-seeing emerald eyes... He needed to find somewhere to ride out the approaching storm, without exposing his every flaw to a gleeful witness who would, no doubt, mock him for it in the future.

The thrice-dammed spawn of James Potter was, of course, predictably merciless. The boy cared not for the fact that he was pale. And shaking. And had literally... _begged..._ to be left alone, in the most humiliating show of weakness.

"Do not _force_ me to remind you of the letter of our vow, Professor. You will answer all my questions with the truth, Severus!"

"I don't _want_ to open that thing. I won't!. I didn't ask you for it and I refuse to accept it" His tone could not hide the shudder that raked him from head to toe. There was nothing, absolutely _nothing,_ that he could do to _veil_ the total _abhorrence_ that he felt at the mere thought of opening that box and his reaction, as instinctive as it was, rose Potter's hackles.

"There's nothing gruesome inside, you know?. It's something that _belongs_ to you. It has always been _yours._ I don't see what the bloody problem is, for Merlin's sake!"

"You never do. Do you, Potter?. You've always been _blinder_ than old bats. The worst of it is that _knowing_ _it_ doesn't really inspire you to take care!. You _trample_ over things that you don't really understand, like some kind of bumbling hippogryph, and the fact that your presence is not only _damaging,_ but also _unwelcome_ doesn't seem to bother you in the slightest!"

Verdant pools of grim emotions held his own widened gaze. The boy looked about a breath away from murder: jaw-line rigid and lips pressed into a line that was almost too white. Tanned hands curled into fists. Shoulders tensed as if for battle...

"Of course it bothers me. I don't _enjoy_ seeing you this upset!. I'd love to have the _luxury_ of saying: go on, have some time to yourself. We'll try this again when you are feeling more in control...

But I _can't!._ I _won't!._ If I allow you to hide away from me now then I'll never be given the _chance_ to meet the man who lays behind your masks, Severus!"

He swallowed uneasily, if even Potter could tell that he was unraveling then he was in more trouble than he'd realized. He cared not for the conversation they were having, dared not carry on with it in his current frame of mind. He might say something truly unforgivable, something wounding enough to fall right out of the awfully confining cupboard that held the many meanings of the one word that he was slowly learning to despise above all others: respect.

He _owed_ this man his _respect._ He'd sworn to offer that much on Draco's life...

His gaze fell away from his companion and he took another step backwards, but the action didn't gain him any liberty and his unwanted reward was an even _fiercer_ growl:

"You are not a _coward!._ You don't _walk_ _away_ from confrontation!. You _like_ to have your say, no matter how awful your words might sound to those around you or how much they hurt their targets. You _enjoy_ hurling them out all the more if you are positively _certain_ that they'll do harm...

Why is this _different,_ Professor?. It's only a _box!._ A simple, wooden box. Why does it affect you enough to make you run?"

He refused to look at the object in question, although Potter had picked it up and now held it in front of himself, as if in offering.

There was something that felt too much like dread raising within him. Something so akin to suffocating trepidation, that he _knew_ that he'd collapse in the next few seconds unless he found safe shelter...

"I _need_ to leave!. I. Have. To, Potter!. For Salazar's sake... Can't you forget your despicable agenda just this once?. I have _nothing_ left to offer your foul mind for it's sick thrills.

I. AM. A. HUMAN. BEING, POTTER!. And I want... I _need..._ PRIVACY. Right. _Now!"_

The boy had become rigid like stone. Those brilliant green eyes looked dark and wounded as he simply stood there. His tanned arms flailed around aimlessly with that exquisitely carved box clutched, almost ferociously, between white-knuckled fingers...

Finally he decided to stand up from his chair, every movement was a measured slow motion obviously meant to soothe:

"I am also a human being, Severus. Humans offer one another _solace_ in times of need. Humans attempt to _understand_ one another. It is called COMMUNICATION!. And it does _wonders_ for one's state of mind"

He saw red at the little bastard's acidic dig and squared his thin shoulders into a stiffened stance that clearly spelled out the word _confrontation_ in neon-bright letters.

"Do not mock me, Harry Potter!" He whispered with the kind of deathly tone that had felled fiercer men.

The auror's visage paled and he halted right in the middle of his obvious attempt to circumvent the table in order to forge for himself a more direct access to the spot were Severus was standing.

"I am _not_ mocking you, YOU IDIOT!. I'm trying to _help_ you!. I need to understand what the Hell is going on inside that crazy head of yours, But. You. Are. Not. Letting. Me!"

He was nettled by that reference to his head, the memory of the fiasco that his solo-outing had become was still so fresh that he snarled:

"If you _dare_ trying Legilimency on me again, Potter, I will make sure that you regret it until the very day you die!"

The boy looked fit to explode. His eyes shone with livid fury and his lips were fiercely pursed.

He deposited the blasted box back on the table with a resounding, absolutely enraged thud before taking a couple of sharp footsteps in Severus's direction.

His hands rose to plough through that mop of his when he was no more than three paces away and his tone, when he finally spoke, was a barely restrained whisper:

_"What_ are you doing, Severus?. _Why_ are you behaving like _this?._ I refuse to be diverted, like a two year old, with a trick as obvious as that one. If you _want_ to talk about the Legilimency we will. I _promise_ you that, but not right now!.

Right now you are having some sort of... nervous break-down. I didn't even _know_ that you could be affected in this way by anything... I _want_ to help you. I _need_ to help you!. You've got to stop seeing me as your enemy and trust me a little, for Merlin's sake!"

That shockingly sincere-sounding rant thundered around the room in the ensuing silence, every word seemed to echo somewhere deep within Severus and he felt... _strangely_ _terrified._

His palms began to sweat and his throat dried. His heartbeat pounded against his too-thin wrists like the wild galloping of a thousand stampeding horses. His breathing became labored, too shallow to offer him enough air. He felt dizzy, upset and... utterly _unbalanced._

"I... I don't think I can, Potter!. I... There is too much animosity between the two of us"

"That animosity exists only in your head!. I was wrong about the Felix Felicis, I've admitted that already. I've done _nothing_ else to you that could be even considered as _harmful._ I'm no longer the child you used to teach. I've grown up, Severus!. Won't you at least do me the courtesy of acknowledging that?"

Midnight-black eyes raked over that tautly held body. He remembered the boy so well that he still had trouble relating to the creature before him. He often found himself disoriented by the fact that the child... The child had surpassed the last memory he had of James Potter and now... _now_ he reminded Severus of no one, at least not in the same way that he'd once done...

"Of course I'll admit it!. It'd be beyond daft to deny it, Mr. Potter. You are a teenager no longer. You've finished school. You hold a very prestigious job, indeed. You changed during the time that I have lost. All of you have..."

A snort that was clearly relieved, but also expressive enough to portray all manner of frustrated impatience, exploded from the gryffindor's widened nostrils.

"There!, you've _finally_ admitted it of your own free will. I am an _adult_ now, all right?. I've become a man whom you've never properly met and, therefore, it's not fair of you to judge me as harshly as you are trying to. I admit that I was a bit of a bastard to you when you first came to, but I was under the influence of a potion designed to read YOUR OWN DESIRES, SEVERUS!. You can't blame _me,_ entirely, for that whole fiasco. So... let's move on and agree on the fact that we are strangers to one another, strangers who want to get to know each other better, strangers who _might_ have a lot in common. Strangers who could very easily become incredibly close...

What's in there that could possibly harm you, professor?. It's only a _possibility, a_ door of sorts. You could open it fully, you know?. You could close it completely too, for that matter, only... I'm _hoping_ that you'll give it at least one _try _before deciding that you are not interested in finding out where it _might_ lead you...

You can be _cautious,_ if you like. I could do _slow,_ I think. Is the idea of trying things out really that unacceptable to you?"

He was shocked by the idiocy of the brat. How dare he give him a lecture such as this one?.

"You _forget_ that you've taken my _free_ _will_ away from me, Potter!. I've been given enough reasons to distrust your every intention. No friendship, of any kind, can ever grow from so inauspicious a beginning"

Potter looked straight at him. Emerald eyes shining with a hardened core that spoke of the same unmovable determination that he'd so often shown when he was younger. This creature, who was ruthlessly _trying_ to stare him down, was the Boy Who Lived. The runt who had destroyed the Dark Lord with nothing but sheer luck and a ridiculously stubborn tenacity.

"Gosh!... That one was harsh, Severus. It truly was. It was also so _ironic_ that I'd feel like laughing, if

it wasn't for the fact that using _that_ particular argument is so _hypocritical_ of you that I could just... hit you, for having the actual _balls_ to say such a thing to _me_!"

Dark eyes narrowed in outraged disconcertion:

"Potter..." He'd planned to deliver a truly cutting remark. One so incisive that it'd leave the little jerk figuratively bleeding to his death at Severus's own feet. But the boy, as it turned out, was the more livid of the two.

"_Allow_ me to tell you the story of a friendship with roots buried so deeply in "_inauspicious_ _beginnings_" that it shouldn't have EVER happened!

There was once a man, a very old man. A man locked into a fierce war, with a dark enemy...

And there was boy. A dangerous, clever boy. A boy _enslaved_ to the old man's enemy, through his own misguided choices..."

He lost all color and his breath halted, ebony eyes widened with unutterable horror at the unexpected brutality of that attack.

"Potter!"

The auror's voice rose, instead of coming to a halt, and the man himself approached him determinedly.

Glittering green eyes hardened like steel. Astonishingly cruel words escaping his pursed lips like shots fired at close range with the intention to kill:

"One fine day the boy came to the old man. _Begged_ him for a second chance and the old man... he didn't even _think_ to hesitate, he just... _gave_ it!.

They eventually became closer than father and son. They... they _loved_ each other, Severus!. So much...

It didn't matter that everyone around them thought that the old man had gone crazy. That his judgment was questioned again, and again..., because of that single decision.

He stood by his choice stubbornly. He _trusted_ that boy, against all the odds, until his dying day.

And. He. Was. Proved. Right, in the end..."

Silence.

There were tears: Shamed, horrified tears running down Severus's cheeks.

He felt broken and too shattered to breathe. To speak. To escape...

He stood there: paralyzed beyond reaction by those words and it felt as if Albus's very ghost had abandoned his "Great Adventure" to stand inside this room and judge him harshly...

"I... That was _merciless_, Potter."

Lily's son shrugged his shoulders. Trembling hands rose towards him, as if to touch him, but ended up fluttering downwards before making contact.

The auror was ashen faced, but quite calm. He remained upright, apparently undaunted by the awful tension that surrounded them like Devil's Snare. He behaved like a man obviously used to withstand the harshest of all fates...

"I am only ever merciless with _you,_ Severus. I wish I didn't have to be, but I don't think you'll accept gentleness from me. At least not yet.."

Those three sentences lodged in his heart like poisoned darts. They sat heavily within him, wounding him with the awareness that the boy... the boy was right, of course.

Albus... _Albus_ would have been so _disappointed_ of him... so grievously _crushed_ by Severus' inability to _grant_ this ridiculous _second_ _chance_ that the gryffindor was, so insistently, _demanding_ to be offered that Severus fancied he could _literally_ hear the old man's despairing sigh.

His head lowered forlornly towards the floor. Long hair fell around his wan features like a protective shield of fluid ebony...

Potter's fingers appeared fleetingly across his field of vision before he felt their rough-tipped touch settle gently over him. The boy set about the task of curling long strands of his dark hair around the pale shell of his left ear with tireless tenderness...

"I am sorry, Severus. I shouldn't have spoken to you like that. I'm sure that there must have been some other way to drive that point across, only... you drive me spare with all that defensiveness. You _never_ just... _shut_ _up_ and accept help gracefully. It has to be _pounded_ into you with a jack hammer!"

He used the excuse presented by the mention of that unrecognizable term to pull himself away from the boy's disconcertingly... _loving..._ touch. His head lifted and he took a step away, frowning with confusion:

"Jack hammer?. What on Earth is a jack hammer?"

If Potter saw through his trick he did not say. He allowed him to step away, all the way to the other

side of the table, without making a single comment.

That tanned hand, now empty of Severus' own hair, lowered very slowly. The green eyes that followed his every move were soft and understanding, utterly gentle:

"Have you lived among wizards for so long that you've forgotten your own roots, Severus Snape?. A Jack hammer is a huge metal machine. Muggles use it to drill rock. I thought the parallel was perfect"

He was too shattered to chuckle at the comment. Although he knew, with disconcerting certainty, that the boy would have followed his cue. Had, maybe, even offered him the opening on purpose.

He suspected that, if he had only attempted to take it, Lily's child would have _helped_ _him_ use that brief flash of humor to step away from the whole situation and find some kind of...respite, only... he lacked the _strength_ to play games of any kind. Not at the moment. Not after having so painful a wound ripped open in such a brutal manner. He felt far too raw.

Albus... Albus remained a grief that he'd never recovered from. A regret never dealt with. A dark poison that threatened to choke him every time he so much as _dared_ to think about that night. About his _choice_. About the fact that he'd... lifted his wand and _killed_ his beloved mentor in cold blood...

The boy waited at least a minute for his answer and, when he failed to provide it, had to endure the unnerving scrutiny of those thickly-lashed green eyes.

"Come and sit beside me, Severus. You look ready to faint"

He was held by the arm then. Anchored to the moment, to the place by thick, short fingers and he followed their owner back to the table.

Potter fussed over him. Pulled his chair out and helped him sit, as if Severus were some old and frail Grandfather. He fluttered beside him in the ever-growing silence, releasing little jerks of nervous energy in the form of half-formed motions every few seconds.

"Would you like some tea, Professor?. I think something warm might do you good... You look far too pale"

He agreed sharply, more to give the brat something to do than from any true desire to drown his every sorrow within the murky depths of a strong cup of Earl Grey...

Potter seized the small task like a man on a mission. He puttered around, setting the tea with a kind of attention to detail that could only be described as... too fierce.

The drink arrived. And with it, those eyes returned to occupy the space on the opposite side of the table. Thin wisps of curling steam became the only true barrier that separated one deeply worried gaze from its absolutely drained counterpart...

For a long time they both remained thus, silently staring into each other's eyes...

Not a word bridged the seemingly insurmountable chasm that had just opened between them.

Then Potter pushed his ugly mug aside and a strong, determined arm extended towards the edge of the table. Those short fingers closed around the beautiful box with mulish stubbornness and the very air that surrounded them turned heavy with tension.

"Why won't you open it, Severus?"

His focus was forcefully re-directed towards the blasted box and he studied it intently. Dark eyes dulled with defeated misgivings, drawn face ashen...

"What wealth of grace rests here..." He read aloud the legend that had been so lovingly etched onto the cover and a shiver racked his body from head to toe: _"Grace..._ I have never owned such a thing"

Potter's brows furrowed thoughtfully. A frown of concentration drew twin lines just above the masculine promontory that was his nose.

"You are afraid, are you not?. You must have guessed what's inside, unless you are sure it's a trick...

Is that it?. Do you think that I...?. Wait. Wait... What the Hell do you actually think, Severus?.

I _need_ you to go ahead and spit whatever it is out into the open, it's the only way for us to deal with it. I'll help you move forwards, no matter what. I promise."

Severus remained silent for a very long time, his thoughts had become a wild mess of emotions that he did not know how to untangle...

Finally, his voice rent the quiet and he spoke very slowly, almost as if through a thick fog. He'd become a man making a confession that he was not entirely certain he wanted to make, a man making a huge _effort._..

"It looks so much like the boxes that fill Olivander's shop that..." The flow of his speech faltered. The sorrow-filled awareness of just how empty of his magic he truly felt made him shiver.

His eyes closed and he took a single deep breath.

Potter waited. Green eyes that were wide and brimming with tears stared straight at him as the boy held perfectly still, apparently waiting for him to regain the strength necessary to carry on talking, in a silence that was as scrupulously respectful as it was shocked with anguish...

"My wand is... it's _precious_ to me, Potter. It's the same one that I bought when I was eleven. I've never lost it. Not _ever, a_nd it's saved my life so many times already that I...

I do _mourn_ it's absence as if it were my own brother. As if it were a friend who's gone... maybe _forever..._

I don't even _want_ to imagine that it's here!. Because it can not _be_. Don't you see?...

This is the exact kind of trick that your father would have pulled on me. The kind that would have had Sirius Black rolling all over the floor with laughter, pointing his finger straight towards my desperately disappointed face as I pulled out some... awful little memento from that thing.

- Did you think it was a _wand_ Sniv?. _Your_ _wand_?. Why would we give you that?. You are a squib, now, old boy!. Don't you remember?- That's what he would have said, what they all would have said and I... I'm not letting anyone mock me for _this._ Not even _you_!"

Potter looked ready to bash him on the head.

"I am _not_ my father, Severus!. Neither am I Sirius. They were all a bunch of prats, by the way, and Albus... what Albus _did_ about this whole thing... what he _allowed_ to take place... it was _unforgivable_!. All of it: the years of bullying, the thoughtless attack... the whole cover-up!.

I _resent_ that you compare me with them on the flimsy excuse that one of them happened to be my progenitor!"

He flinched on the receiving end of the Gryffindor's incensed indignation:

"It is instinctive, boy!. You look so much like your father that I can't help it but remember every dirty trick that they played on me as soon as I set eyes on you"

Potter's green gaze flashed with the kind of fire that could burn a man alive. Slowly, but utterly scorch him, from the inside out...

"I also look like _her,_ you know?. Like my mother. I have her eyes, at least. That's what I've been told, Severus. By _you,_ among plenty of others. Does that also mean that you feel the _instinct_ to _love_ me for the rest of your life?"

He was so shocked by that unexpected hit that his brain froze. He could think of nothing at all!. Couldn't voice a single word to convey the infuriated wave of betrayed indignation that was rising inside him with enough force to break his formidable control.

To have opened up to the brat, in so painful an issue as his current lack of a wand was to him, only to have his most _treasured_ _emotions_ mocked without reason... He would not _tolerate_ such treatment!.

He stood up suddenly. His high-backed chair fell to the floor with a thunderous thud when he pushed himself away from the table. His black eyes raged with the kind of terrifying ire that used to make seasoned Death Eaters flinch. He _knew_ that he could be truly formidable when driven to this level of ferocious wrath.

"Lily Evans is a subject that's _forbidden_ to you, Potter!. She might have been your mother, boy, but the way I felt, or still feel, about her is my business alone and _not_ a matter of derision. You are NOT _welcome_ to comment on it, or ask questions about it, or poke fun at me because of it!. Is that perfectly clear?"

Potter looked ready to faint. He was pale and still. His eyes shone with the sickened brightness of the truly remorseful.

"I am sorry, Severus!. So very sorry... That last comment was truly unforgivable of me and I... I apologize"

He could sense genuine contrition in the auror's sombre tone. There was something about the boy's posture that stilled Severus's hand right there, preventing him from venting his spleen any further.

He could see, truly _see_, the dejected droop of those wide shoulders. The sudden greyness that now coated the formerly golden cheeks like some sort of ghastly shroud. He could, _literally,_ touch the absolute misery reeking off Potter like a foul, abhorrent odor.

He could not bring himself to accept that flimsy apology, though. No matter how heartfelt.

But he could not walk away, either...

Not when he _knew_ that doing so would feel like a slap in the face to this contrite and silent child...

Lily's son. Albus' precious Saviour. The boy who had _dared _to accuse him of failing to offer the same kind of opportunity that he had once availed himself of: a _second_ _chance..._

That's what all of this was about, wasn't it?. As bizarre as it may sound... that's what Harry Potter wanted from him. He'd been put through all of this ordeal because this forlorn creature had _wanted_ to _approach_ him, but hadn't had a _clue_ about how to manage it. The boy wanted a chance to... what, exactly?... Did he want to become _friends, _get to the point where Severus didn't mind exchanging little anecdotes about his mother?. Or was this just... another example of the Saviour's unique sense of fair play? Did Potter truly feel the _need_ to save him?... HIM?... A confirmed, unrepentant _murderer_?.

"Severus?..."

The sound of his given name, being so hesitantly pronounced by the little menace, ripped him away from the bewildered contemplation of his own confusing thoughts and he blinked very slowly. Ebony eyes focused on the frowning expression that had taken over the Gryffindor's features.

"Where _were_ you?. You seemed to be a million miles away"

He did not want to answer that question. So he bent down to retrieve his fallen chair and, by the time he'd sat on it once again, Potter seemed to have caught onto the idea that he did _not_ desire to enlighten him on the matter.

Silence settled then over the room. Both too wary of the explosive situation to risk upsetting each other any further.

But, of course, Potter couldn't leave things well enough alone for any length of time.

Within five minutes the child pushed that blasted box across the table, towards Severus' own hands, and whispered haltingly:

"You've got to trust me. I _need_ you to trust me. Nothing else will ever grow between us, unless you do, Severus!"

He'd have faced a wild dragon with more ease. He did _not_ _want_ to open that box under any circumstances, but he had been challenged to do it. By _Potter,_ no less!.

He'd been _shamed_ into accepting that he owed the boy his chance, at least until he blew it, and if he did... No. No, _when_ he did... then Severus would be finally _free_ to walk away with his head held high.

No one, not even Albus' ghost, would dare blaming him if he decided to cut the obnoxious brat out of his life after Potter inevitably messed up this whole second chance business that he so stubbornly desired to _foist_ over them both.

He took a very deep breath, mind made up to bear with the boy for as long as it took him to give up on the whole ridiculous idea.

"Very well then, Potter. I'll open the bloody thing!"

Long pale fingers grabbed the lovely wooden contraption and brought it closer. The distinctive aroma of the Agarwood rose, like an invisible blessing, to gift his flaring nostrils with the rich sandalwood-like smell .

"Why Agarwood?. Isn't the material a bit... too _exquisite_ for the likes of me?"

Green eyes settled over him with the brightness of a carefully cut emerald. A smile curved the boy's lips and his head shook.

"You were asleep for so long, Severus... When we first tried to bring you out of your healing coma you were _unreachable_. You didn't want to return. Nothing that we tried worked. NOTHING!.

Agarwood oil was first suggested to us by one of the experts we consulted, an Asian man. I'm actually surprised that you managed to recognize the wood itself. Not many people can, you see?. Are you also familiar with the properties of the oil?"

He frowned in concentration, trying to recall what he'd read about the fluid...

"Oud oil, extracted from the infected bark of the Aquilaria Agallocha... It has been associated with mysticism and divination for centuries. It's supposed to cleanse the body and mind, it heals the spirit... It used to be revered by the ancient practitioners of both, Legilimency and Oclumency, as a tool that enabled them to achieve what they call The Pinnacle"

Potter smiled, his head motioning agreement as he expanded on the information:

"Yes. The Pinnacle is the ultimate goal of all true Legilimens. It is a state of being where the wizard finally abandons his own body and can become his magical essence, instead. It's only a goal, you see?. No one has truly managed to reach it before, although quite a few have died trying...

The point is that we believed that the only way to reach you was through Legilimency, Severus and the oil... the oil was meant to open up the channels of communication that you'd closed. Allow us in, if you will... It didn't work, of course. Even trapped within a coma you are so skilled an occlumens that none of us could breach that mind of yours"

He was riveted to the conversation now, focusing completely on this new information that was being so freely offered to him.

"What happened?. I take it it was Luc who tried to contact me?"

Potter sighed. Index finger rubbing madly at the bridge of his nose.

"Yeah. He is good at it and he knows you inside-out. He is the one who found out about the oil, but you... You did not respond to him or to Draco. Neither were you moved by Minerva, or Kingsley, or the experts from St Mungo's...

Then Albus' portrait came up with a very simple observation: you have always seen Legilimency as an attack. It was obvious to him that you were... _defending_ _yourself_.

The only way that he could think of, for us to establish contact, was to enter through the one door that you, yourself, had left opened..."

Horrified understanding zeroed in on the only possibility that _might_ actually fit that description and a sudden wave of nausea hit his stomach:

"Oh, no. No, Potter!. Tell me that you _didn't..._ I was _dying_, for goodness sake!.

I had to _give_ you those dammed memories in a rush!. I didn't have the time to be careful about the method. That was _not_ an invitation to come back into my mind whenever you felt like it"

Soft green eyes stared straight into his own.

"Well, it was the only thing that _worked_!... If it's any consolation let me tell you that I was _terrible_ at it. I had to learn how to do it from a bunch of very frustrated slytherins and, trust me, trying to learn Legilimency from you was a piece of cake, compared to learning it from a frighteningly impatient Lucius Malfoy!"

He was stricken with the most awful sense of having being violated that he'd ever felt, in the whole of his life...

"You... you've seen _all_ of my memories?"

Potter's voice grew firmer. Fervent. Those green eyes acquired the absolute harshness of true conviction:

"It was _necessary,_ Severus!"

He felt _faint_ with mortified embarrassment. Exposed, to his very soul, before this man who'd _seen._.. EVERYTHING: His every _mistake._ His every _failure_... His every _heartbreak_. His every _lost_ _hope_...

He understood then, without a shadow of doubt, just how much he'd changed in the boy's eyes. Potter was Gryffindor enough to have felt pity for his pathetic Slytherin Professor.

The kind of sorrow that can easily break a man in two rose within him then. He became distressed with the idea that he was... no longer able to demand respect from the child before him, not now that Potter knew... HIM!.

"Severus?"

Black eyes shied away from the auror's own and his pale face turned rigid. He was not a closed off entity any longer. He was _shame_ and he was _anger_. He was despondent, grief-stricken humanity. He was wide open... WIDE. OPEN!...

With a sudden, almost furious flick of his index finger he pulled the lid off the box and looked inside, truly unsurprised now to find it there:

Eleven and a half inches of unpolished Silver Birch with a core that held the heart-string of a stillborn unicorn...

A wand that spoke of _potential_ and _purity. _At least that's what Ollivander had claimed, on that distant morning, to the wide-eyed eleven year old he'd been so long ago...

_Potential._ And _purity_...

How could _this_ wand have possibly chosen _him_?. The longer he thought on it, the least that he understood it. There was never a man as far removed from _both_ as he'd turned out to be...

He shot up to his feet and stumbled hastily backwards.

He could not cope with the presence of the wand beside him, in the room. Resting, so innocently, within that protective casing meant to keep it's power clean. _Pure._..

He'd committed _atrocities_ with that thing!. So many _atrocities_...

He'd brewed poisons with it. Designed both lethal and disfiguring curses. He'd tortured others brutally. He'd sworn himself over to a monster. He'd allowed _children_, who'd been under his care at the time, to come to harm. He'd murdered so many people in cold blood... He'd killed Albus...

"Severus?"

Potter sounded bewildered. He'd also shot to his feet and was trying to reach him, arm extended forwards, ready to hold him...

"Severus! What are you _doing_? Where are you _going_?"

He'd turned around wildly and was trying to abandon the room, as if the very hounds of Hell were hot on his heels. Potter followed close behind, attempting to bring him to a halt.

The door to the flat loomed ahead, luring him with the promise of freedom. With the certainty that he could find... _oblivion._.. if he were to _lose_ himself within a crowd of strangers. Muggle strangers at that, people who had _never_ heard of _magic_ and could, therefore, never judge him for his crimes against it...

"Severus!"

The boy's hand finally closed around his arm, just as his own had curled around the doorknob. He was brought to an unwanted stop then. Held, inside this house, against his will.

"Let go, Potter. I _need_ to _leave_!"

Emerald eyes turned mulish. Thin lips compressed into a thin, displeased line that only opened to growl an absolutely incensed denial:

"No way!. You've got to stay _here_ and deal with _this_ like a sane, well rounded person. Things do not _disappear_, just because you walk away from them!"

He turned on the child, ebony-black eyes alive with utter purpose:

"Trust, Mr. Potter, is a _privilege_ that goes _both_ ways!.

I _trusted_ _you_, when you demanded that I open that box. And now you'll have to _trust_ that I can deal better with my own emotions when there is no outside interference. I shall return when I feel _ready_. You've already been _unwelcome_ witness to enough of my wretched life. Allow me to have some privacy, for once. I have the right, you know? I. Have. The. Right!"

The Gryffindor's hand clutched his arm almost fiercely in a brief clench of wide, tanned fingers that was over in a blink. Concerned verdant eyes turned darker with misgivings as the boy released him slowly.

A brief silence filled the hallway as they both stood there, uncertain and hurting. Poised at the very edge of change...

Then the child's mouth opened and he whispered softly:

"Very well, Severus. Do what you must."

He turned the doorknob and escaped into the all-encompassing beige corridor without even bothering to utter a response.

Potter remained perfectly still beside the door. A paralyzed, pale-faced figure whose eyes followed him every step of the way.

That gaze didn't leave him at all while he waited for the lift. It never abandoned him until the polished metal doors finally closed between them, interposing a physical barrier between himself and those wounded green eyes...

The lift-cage plummeted down, towards the ground floor, leaving the boy behind. Taking Severus away from it all at top speed, granting him the chance to reach out towards _freedom_ and _distance._ Towards _anonymity._ Towards _relief_... Towards all the things that he could only find away from Harry Potter. Far, _far_ away!...

TBC...


	18. Chapter 18

_**THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 18**_

Harmony is a hard thing to achieve when you resent the other half of your household with as much zeal as Severus resented his.

He could not reconcile with the awful awareness that Potter... _Potter_ had _seen_ his life!. The boy had invaded his privacy once again, and was now in possession of _a lot_ of information that could be used to blackmail or humiliate him, at any time.

The days immediately following the return of his wand were fraught with tension.

There was an expectant quality to the child's every action that Severus found trying. He was constantly on guard, expecting to be threatened, somehow. Mocked. Humiliated...

A new and unacknowledged truce had taken over their former open hostility, although he was absolutely _certain_ that such estate of affairs wouldn't last the week. Not when it involved the two of them...

The boy, though, seemed content enough with the situation and Severus often heard him whistling around the house. Singing tunelessly under his breath and generally making an absolute nuisance of himself...

The unexpected recovery of his arm meant that the prickly shield that used to protect it had also disappeared. There was no _need_ to limit the amount of magic being performed around him any longer. This allowed them to live with a lot more ease, as the boy could now cook, clean and take care of most tasks with magic...

It also brought a new and highly volatile kind of tension into the mix, because Severus hadn't managed to recover his own power. Not a single _spark_ of it!.

He now carried his wand at all times. He practiced well known charms every day until he ran himself ragged, but the length of birch didn't seem to recognize him any longer. There was no _acknowledgement_ of him when he held it, no rush of greeting. No exhilarating, welcoming flow of energy eagerly waiting to do his biding. The precious wand that had once blessed him with the gift of his own magic was now a mere stick that brought him only sorrow. An unresponsive and alien object, seemingly as magic-less as he himself had become...

Frustration became a shimmering undercurrent of barely repressed anger that underscored his every thought, his every emotion...

He _resented_ the boy's magic, the boy's _freedom, _the boy's quiet conviction that he'll just wake up one day and find himself recovered.

He _resented_ the ease with which the child could recall what had happened last year or the year before. He _resented_ the fact that he had to ask him for information regarding what had happened to this former student of his or that other one...

But, more than anything else, he resented the increasing awareness that Potter always responded to his every shift in mood. _ALWAYS!_. No matter how unacknowledged they might be. The child knew, just... _knew_ when he was mad. Or filled to the brim with crippling self-pity. He could tell when Severus was bored. Or frustrated, or just... plainly angry and the certainty that he was an open book to those all-seeing emerald eyes was driving him spare!.

Things came to a head one Tuesday morning when the child finished his coffee and plunked his mug onto the table with force enough to break it.

He then crossed those... unnecessarily _muscled_ arms of his in front of his chest and proceeded to sigh very... _loudly._

"I'd say you've sulked enough already about the Legilimency, Severus. It's been more than a _week_ and you are still moping around, you are behaving like a fifteen year old, for Godric's sake!.

If you've got something to tell me then maybe you should just... say it!. That way we'll be done with it already!. It'd be great for the place's... _atmosphere._ I'm sure even _you_ would agree with that much, at the very least!"

He was ruffled by the self-suffering tone that the child had _dared_ to inject into the words. By the _implication_ that he was some sort of badly behaving teenager, indulging in the throes of unwarranted angst. He was astounded by the venomous nature of the rage that filled him upon hearing that challenging little ran and the fact that the brat just... kept _looking_ at him, apparently waiting for some sort of response, didn't help matters any.

_"Nothing_ I say will change the fact that you've invaded my mind without permission for the second time in our acquaintance, Potter. I see no _reason_ to discuss the matter any further" His tone had gone so frosty that even the brain-dead should have sensed his reluctance to continue with the conversation. The boy, though, decided to ignore the tone. And the look that accompanied it. He pretty much _ignored_ Severus' plain discomfort altogether and plodded doggedly ahead.

"Just because you can't _change_ it doesn't meant you have to bury it underneath a bloody mountain, professor!. Learning about it has upset you enough to keep you snarling every second of the day for a whole dammed _week!._ It's plain to see that you've got a bee under your bonnet, so... let's have it out, OK?. You can shout at me and everything, if it'll make you feel better"

He was utterly stunned by the pointlessness of that attitude. What would he gain by... _venting?. _It made no sense to him at all!.

He'd always despised those whiny, wimpy characters who misspent their existence bemoaning past bad luck. He'd never had any time for the whole _emoing _nonsense, it was all just... an appallingly _indulgent_ way to go through life.

"I don't _see_ the point of it!. What do you _want_ me to do? Cry all over your shoulder for something that can't be changed, anyway?. The very idea is... _ridiculous!"_

The boy had the audacity to laugh.

"You? Crying over this?... I kind of wish you would!. It'll probably be safer for me, altogether. I was recalling just this morning your little episode back then, in my fifth year. Do you remember how you grabbed me by the tie and screamed at me until your voice ran hoarse?...

I bet you are even madder now. I can see it, you know?. I'm not _blind._ It's been driving you slowly up the wall all week long and it's not getting any better!"

He pushed his plate away, unable to take a single bite more. The tea seemed equally unappealing all of a sudden. His mind buzzed with the prospect of screaming at the child. Of shouting at him and throwing all this lovely silver cutlery to the floor in a fit of..._ rebellion!. _

He could imagine it too. See this lovely teacup being irreparably smashed by his own hands. He could picture it as it lay at his feet in a million shiny shards of shattered loveliness... Turned, forever, into another one of those beautiful things that he'd once possessed, but had destroyed in a moment of rage fueled by the damaging _blindness_ of his heinous temper_..._

He did not _want_ to do it, though. What would it accomplish, anyway?. He'd come out feeling childish and ungrateful. He'd come out the loser, once again. He'd be the one to give up one more of his meager treasures. The one to surrender the totality of his tattered dignity in order to _wallow_ in a temper tantrum!.

"This is a very different situation, Mr. Potter. I was in full possession of my senses, back then. I _placed_ those memories in that pensive in order to keep them _away_ from you.

Your _curiosity_ led you to breach the small amount of trust that I'd placed in your hands, by absenting myself from the room without taking that basin with me" His voice came to a halt as he remembered the moment. The indignant sense of shame that had engulfed him. The frightening desire to pummel the child into a pulp right there and then...

He'd terrified himself with that reaction. Had seen a hint of his father, in his own unpardonable behavior, for the very first time in his living years and that one glimpse had been enough to convince him that there was _nothing_ on Earth that could force him back into the same kind of situation, not for any reason. Not even for Albus...

He refused to become another Tobias. He would _never_ become his father. _NEVER!._ That was something that he'd promised himself a lifetime ago and he'd be dammed to Hell and back before he _allowed_ himself to fail in this.

The emerald eyes that contemplated him from the other side of the table seemed to belong to a man older than him. Older than Albus himself. Definitely older than he knew the boy to be...

"I don't think I ever plucked up the courage to apologize for that one. Did I, Severus?. If it's any consolation I'll confess that I discovered that very night that I really didn't like the boy my father used to be. Or Sirius...

I didn't let it go, either. I confronted professor Lupin and my Godfather, _both,_ the moment I reached the dorms. I needed to know _why_ they'd done something so awful to you!"

Severus stiffened visibly. He crossed his spindly arms very tightly across his ribcage, hugging himself almost compulsively. He started blinking very slowly, turning the whole of his expression blank in the space of a heartbeat, as he began to fortify his vast mental defenses. Preparing himself to be regaled with some outrageously insulting little excuse that would _redeem_ the boy's loved ones. What he didn't expect, though, was to hear the auror's tone harden with obvious disappointment.

"I had never been _ashamed_ of them before that night. I could not believe that they would do such a thing, just because they _could!._ It was such a hard blow for me...

I looked up to them. I _revered_ the floor they walked on. I _wanted_ to make them feel proud of me. I... _enjoyed_ it, whenever anyone compared me to my father...

I've never felt real pride at being known as James Potter's son after that night. Don't you see?. It doesn't really matter that he loved my mother and me, or that he was a loyal friend.

It's not so impressive that he'd sided with the Order, either. Not when he lived a charmed life that lead him straight to it, a life filled with indulgence and a terrifying, almost careless, _disdain_ towards those who weren't quite like him...

He _despised_ you because he feared your intelligence. He _feared_ my mother's attachment to you. He believed that slytherins were not worth the air they breathed... That's the kind of attitude that brought us to the war, in the first place!"

Severus was floored by the unexpected wave of warm... _vindication_ that filled his narrow chest upon hearing those words. No one had, _ever_, condemned the mighty quartet to his face.

He suspected that Albus might have regretted many of the things that happened during Severus' wretched adolescence, at some point during his lifetime, but the esteemed Headmaster of Hogwarts hadn't been a man used to apologizing...

They'd never really talked these things through. Never spoken about the fact that the teenager Severus had once been, was allowed to come a mere breath away from dying one of the most horrifying deaths any wizard could experience, while under Albus' biased care.

They'd never spoken about the fact that Severus' _safety_ had been ignored, time and time again. Never acknowledged that his need for _justice_ had been brushed aside in order to protect a _beast_ who had been attending the school _illegally_, in the first place!.

"Your father was only a child, Mr. Potter. We all were. It wasn't James Potter who behaved with reckless disregard for the safety of his students. Someone else held, not only the power necessary to put a stop to all of it, but also had the moral obligation to do something. He is the one who decided to keep silent, the one who _failed_ to deliver _justice _at every turn"

His throat closed tightly as his own hissed words echoed around him, bringing him a new and unwanted awareness, about himself and his motivations, with the force of a sledge hammer. He understood now that he'd never listened to Black's frantic apologies, or to Lupin's sickening groveling, because he'd wanted _ALBUS_ to recognize that he'd been wrong...

He hadn't _forgiven_ the idiotic gryffindors because his doing so would have let the old man off the hook. He'd not only kept a monster grudge going for almost twenty years, but also geared it towards the wrong targets!. He'd _allowed_ it to color his every interaction with the child in front of him because he'd needed that old man to say to his face, at least _once,_ that he'd been wronged. That what had happened to him at school had been an _atrocity_. That it should had never been kept _quiet_. That he hadn't been... _disposable..._

"Just because my father was a child doesn't make him any less responsible for his actions, Severus!. He found out that Sirius had invited you to follow them, but chose not to stop him. He didn't tell you the truth, either. They all deserved to be punished for what they put you through!.

I wouldn't have stopped rattling that cage until something was done. You almost died!. _DIED!._ That's as serious as it gets!"

Something very close to sorrow threatened to choke him then and he saw now, maybe for the very first time, that he hadn't been right either. Albus had dismissed him so ruthlessly because he'd allowed himself to be dismissed. He should have raged!. Rebelled!. Acted like a boy who believed himself to be... _valuable_ enough to be _defended.._.

He should had gone straight to Luc.

Old Abraxas had been a member of the Board, back then. He'd have loved to stick one up Albus's arse. But no. No. He'd decided to keep quiet, instead. Waiting, in vain, for the apology that never came...

In a way, he'd never fully trusted Albus after that. Not completely. Not wholeheartedly. Not in the same way that he trusted Luc. Or Cissy. Or Draco... Those three he'd die for.

Albus... Albus he'd only killed for. He'd allowed himself to be tortured for. He'd grown to love that old man, yes. But he'd also learned to be instinctively wary of him. He'd detested how Albus could _measure_ people with barely a look. How mercilessly he could dismiss a person entirely, unless he found them _usefu_l in some way...

"Albus told me, at the time, that he'd chosen to inflict the most harm over the one of us whom he believed to be stronger... He said that Lupin would have been killed on the spot because of that attack. Whereas I... I was a self-sufficient slytherin student who seemed to take everything in my stride"

Potter seemed to be at the very edge of a volcanic eruption. His jaw was gritted and his nostrils flared. His hands were closed tightly, two mighty fists that trembled with the effort of controlling the kind of anger that usually ends up breaking something. Or someone.

"He had the gall to tell you _that_?. He had no right!. He was the _authority_ _figure_ for the lot of you and he was the one at _fault_ here from beginning to end, Severus!. He should have done the decent thing and apologized to you for his terrible behavior, at the very least!"

The realization that the boy shared his own opinions on the matter shocked him. The thought that both, Potter and himself, had suffered the same kind of student life at Hogwarts sank, slowly, into his mind.

He realized then that he'd been so abominable towards all gryffindors because he himself had been persecuted as a slytherin. He'd attacked Albus' house of choice on purpose and the man had never dared to confront him for it.

He'd done, in may ways, as much damage to his own pupils as the Headmaster had done to him. Look at the way he'd behaved towards Potter himself. He'd singled him out, humiliated him at every step, on purpose. Allowed him to be mercilessly bullied by Draco, during his class. He'd even... _physically_ dragged the child off that pensive before throwing him out of the room...

Worse than that, just like Albus himself, he'd never thought to apologize to his student, either. He'd _never_ actually _acknowledged_ his own unforgivably unprofessional behavior. Never seen the parallel between his own situation and Potter's for what it truly was, an almost exact copy of each other...

The very idea that he'd wronged a student, any student, in the same way that he'd been wronged turned his stomach.

"I should have never treated you like I did, Potter. I was the adult of the two, I was your professor!. There were plenty of other ways that I could have used to convey my displeasure with your behavior. I should have _never_ allowed myself to use physical violence against you...

I don't think I ever plucked up the courage to apologize, either, as you so charmingly put it!"

Bright green eyes shone with almost blinding relief. A smile broke across the boy's lips and his tightly held shoulders relaxed so much that Severus became aware, for the first time since the beginning of the conversation, of just how tense the gryffindor had been.

"I think that's probably for the better, Sir. I'd have probably fainted if you'd come to me with an apology, at the time. I was shocked at my dad and disappointed at the lot of them, but... I had yet to _discover_ the whole truth about you. That came later. Much, _much_ later. Almost too late...

That's what this is about, Severus. Don't you see?. I needed to _save_ you when I had the chance. It was the only way to meet the real you!.

I didn't _want_ to go trampling around in your mind, I knew how badly you'd react to that!. I told Malfoy. And Dumbledore, too!. I told them that you'll _explode_ worse than Mount Vesuvius the moment you found out that I've gone poking in your head!...

We wasted precious _weeks_ trying to find a way around it, but we couldn't!. WE. COULDN'T!. And I wasn't going to let you _go_ again. Not without a fight!"

Dark eyes clashed with deep green and they connected. A million and one visions flashed in front of Severus' eyes before he realized what was happening. The boy had opened wide to him!. He'd... he'd _cracked_ his mind open for Severus' perusal and, even as he recoiled in alarmed rejection of the gesture, he understood that it was meant to be an apology. There were no doors for him here. Not one!. Potter would give of himself what Severus had been forced to relinquish, in some kind of strange, frighteningly intimate attempt at _retribution_.

"No. No!. I do not wish to do this, Mr. Potter. It's _unnecessary_. You must stop it. At once!"

The messy swirl of memories that were so haphazardly flashing across his mind came to a sudden stop.

They both remained exactly as they were for a long and shocked moment. A thick silence grew around them as the boy's calm gaze studied his paling face with frightening intensity.

"Why, Severus?. I thought you'd be happy enough with this. I'm _willing_ to let you in. You can look all you want, OK?. It'll make things equal between us, don't you see?. I'll give this to you without any strings attached. It won't come back to bite you at some other point in the future. I promise!"

He was unbalanced by the incredible generosity of that offer. By the fact that he'd been presented with it, in the first place. By the astonishing lack of self-preservation that the auror was displaying. His dark eyes raked the mature features of this child who had, so casually, invited _him_ inside his mind, offered to expose everything that he was. Every memory that he owned, every dream that he'd ever held, every fear that had terrorized him throughout his lifetime...

This was a kind of intimacy the likes of which very few others could compare to. There was nothing quite like it, at least not in Severus' point of view. One could not _hide_ from the truth within one's mind. Not with any kind of success. At least not, for any length of time...

You could veil your true intentions about something that you'd done or thought of in the past, but the actions themselves, the emotions associated with those actions, could not be hidden. They couldn't be changed, either. They could only be _rearranged_ in a sequence that allowed their owner to _mislead_ an unwanted snoop...

Now this boy, whom he'd treated abominably during the totality of their acquaintance, was attempting to grant him the _honor_ of... full disclosure... for no apparent reason that he could see. He'd be crazy to _believe_ that Potter meant any of it, but... as ridiculous as it sounded, he found himself unable to convince himself that it was a trick.

Not after having his arm cured by the auror's gentle magic. Not after having found his wand so very carefully tucked inside a box meant to keep its properties intact, a protective casing designed _specifically_ to maintain it safe and... _active_, even after so long a period of disuse...

"You can't just _open_ yourself thus to anybody, Potter!. Have you lost all sense, child?. I could do _anything_ to you!. I could mess with your mind, sell your most precious memories for profit. Belittle you, by the simple action of describing your every mistake in the most derisive manner I could think of..."

A hand raked through that wild mop of hair and those intensely discomfiting emerald eyes looked straight at him with an openness that brought a lump the size of Russia to his throat.

"I'm not offering this to just _anybody_, Severus!. I'm offering it to _you!._ I'm doing it because I think it will help settle all those fears that are running through your head. You are worried about what I saw... I know you are!. You wonder about what I could be planning on doing with all these things that I know about you...

You are so busy, building imaginary defenses to my supposed evil plans, that you haven't been eating. You rarely sleep. You are so jumpy that your whole posture is rigid from sunup to sundown... I've been trying to be patient, trying not to nag you into another explosion of bad temper, but seeing you like this it's driving me nuts!'

Black eyes that were widened with horrified disbelief clashed against that emerald sea of pure frustration.

"How do you _know_ that I...?. Have you _tried_ to _read_ me again?. I can't believe that you'd..." The auror's abruptly cutting gesture halted the flow of his affronted words.

A trembling hand rose in the air. It attempted to breach the distance separating them from one another, tried to settle over the rigid arm that Severus had placed on the table in a gesture meant to close himself off to any advance coming from the child.

His jerk of agitated rejection paralyzed the boy's extremity in mid-motion and the hesitant contact was stillborn. Green eyes looked straight at him with the kind of pain that couldn't possibly be faked and the voice of the gryffindor seemed to have acquired the very roughness of sandpaper when the man finally managed to whisper:

"I'm offering it because this _thing_ that you are doing can not continue, it has to _stop_ some time, Severus!. I'll go crazy if I can't manage to... make you _see_!...

I need to show you that I trust you. I have to give you back some of the advantage that you _think_ you lost when I looked inside your head. It's the only way that I can think of to fix this mess. Don't you _get_ it? I _know_ that you won't abuse me in any way. You've had this same kind of power over me before and you never used it to hurt me!"

He was shattered by that answer. Broken into a million shame-faced pieces and forced to re-adjust in the blink of an eye. His former firmly-held expectations of what James Potter's son stood for, what the boy believed, what he'll grow up to become... none of it had turned into reality.

He sat here, utterly stunned. Frozen, like the proverbial rabbit, before a man who could be so obviously... _generous_ and gentle towards an old foe. Here was the first auror who'd ever stood up for him, the man who'd arrested his most recent torturer in a very public manner...

Here was the most powerful and revered hero that the wizarding world had seen since Albus himself. A very busy youth by the look of things, someone who should be living his own life, as far away from the likes of Severus Snape as one could possibly get, and yet... _here_ he was was, despite it all...

Potter seemed to have done nothing _else_ with the last four years of his life. Not if the reports he'd been getting were to be believed. The gryffindor had gotten his degree and rose through the ranks, as expected. But his personal life seemed to be a blur of... _waiting. _

The boy had waited. For him, apparently... He'd plotted his recovery with the Malfoys. He'd fought Draco for the right to visit his bedside. He'd gone toe to toe with Luc in a legal battle that he'd ultimately won. He'd learned Legilimency from one of the most ruthless teachers of the practice that he could have possibly encountered and he seemed to have done all of that on Severus' own behalf. The whole concept was mind-boggling. It was also very humbling. And just plainly... _unbelievable_.

"How much did you see, then?. How many of my _mistakes_ did you have to witness before your whole view of me shifted so completely?"

Potter pushed himself eagerly forwards, his tanned arms crossed loosely over the table, helping him maintain his upper body alarmingly close to Severus' own.

The bright resolution in those eyes gave him goose-bumps. He'd never been on the receiving end of this kind of intently focused..._ enthusiasm..._ before and he found it truly unnerving.

"I saw many things but not everything, of that I'm actually certain. I didn't see how much you love your godson, for instance... You didn't respond to me initially, you see?. I believe that you were _disconnected_ from yourself. You had given up already, you wanted to be left alone. You were hurting, Severus. You were hurting so badly!...

I don't know how many times you made me live through Albus' death and Professor Burbage's. I lost count of how many times you re-lived the torture of Alice and Frank Longbottom, I hadn't even _known_ that you've been there...

I saw you torturing muggles and brewing poisons. I saw you teaching the unforgivables to Draco. I saw you burn down houses. Telling Voldermort about the prophecy...

I was _there_ when you found my mother's body and when you allowed yourself to be branded. I was also there when you came back to him, swearing servile obedience...

I saw you destroy every potion bottle that stood on your lab table after being informed that you'd been appointed to become the new Headmaster of Hogwarts. I _saw_ how you kept looking, from your seat at the High Table, while the Carrows unleashed Hell among your students.

I was _there_ when they told you that they'd finally cornered me. And, also, when they confessed that I escaped. I watched you, as you soothed the Lord's temper, promising him that the end was near. Whispering in his ear that _HE_ had the most powerful wand of them all. One of the original deathly Hallows, no less, while I... I was only a boy, in possession of a stick that was not even his own... I had not a chance to win a duel of any kind. Not. A. Chance!...

I saw the way that you only ever told him the truth, even though you _knew_ it to be... mostly inaccurate. I _lived_ the entire war through your eyes, Severus!... _All_ of it! Again. And again. And. Again. AND AGAIN!..."

He was devastated by this news. Shamed, beyond recovery, by the merciless exposure of every atrocity that he'd ever committed. Utterly sickened by the idea that the boy... the boy had truly _seen_ it _all_!. This was the worst. The very worst of _himself_!...

His black eyes turned dull with a distress that he could not hide. He'd feared this, of course... Imagining that something like this had happened was one thing, but having to actually sit in front of the boy like this, forcing himself to look him straight in the eye while he listened to his worst fears becoming cruel reality, was a different experience altogether. It was an excruciating situation, it was mortifying and unpleasant in a way that a more outright kind of torture couldn't really mimic.

This wasn't about the strength of his body being _lacking,_ no. This was about himself. About the whole of his life. About the fact that his _choices_ had been... mostly flawed, selfish. Driven by the kind of stupid greed that had taken him exactly _nowhere_...

"I would have thought those particular memories to be the very ones that'd turn you away from me. You used to _despise_ the very ground I walked on because you, very rightly, suspected me of behaving exactly as you've just described. It doesn't make any sense that, after having finally found irrefutable _proof_ of my unforgivable duplicity, your opinion of my character changed so completely!"

The smile that he got in response to his bewildered comment was a tight little thing. A mere slash of compressed pink lips in a face that was very obviously paling with some kind of inexplicable anguish.

"I _saw_ them through _your_ _eyes_, Severus!. I experienced them exactly as you did. I suffered them, regretted them, saw the nightmares that they caused. I got to finally _understand_ what drove you to do it all.

I saw you for the very first time exactly as you see yourself and I wept for you. _Disconsolately!..._ I have _never_ felt so wretched in my entire life!"

There is nothing more humiliating in the whole world than being told by one's former student just how... _pathetic_ they find you. For a second or two Severus found himself unable to even _breathe,_ so unrelenting was the shame that engulfed him at that moment. His hands shook. His throat dried and he felt utterly incapable of facing the boy.

"You find me _pitiful,_ then. I've abandoned my old role as fearsome monster to become... merely contemptible. Is that it, Mr Potter?"

The auror's face tightened with enraged frustration and that moss-colored gaze seemed to want to drill holes straight into his soul.

"I find you _worthy_, Severus!. Worthier than you believe yourself to be, anyway.

I'm not defending my reasons for trusting you, to _you_, of all people!. There are _things_ inside that head of yours that are totally twisted, you know?. But that's a conversation for another day, I think. You'll need to be stronger than you are right now to deal with what I have to say on the matter. You'll need to have a bit more faith in both, my intentions and my integrity, before I'm even willing to tackle all that baggage.

For now, though, I'll tell you this: you are, without a doubt, the bravest man that I've ever encountered. You are loyal to a fault and so clever that I can plainly see why Voldermort and Dumbledore, _both,_ were so unwilling to let you go, no matter how many suspicions were raised about your loyalty.

You were _always_ an asset to the school and you didn't even know it!. You were _instrumental_ in us wining the war, but no one was made aware of it at all...

You are selfless to the point of stupidity, Severus!. And you _care,_ so much, that it's actually frightening to see!. You do love, no matter who'd dare to deny it... You _do!._ And you do it with all your heart. With all your strength. With everything that you are...

You are a better man than my father ever was. Or my godfather. Although I like to think that they would also have grown up too, eventually."

He was stupefied by that surprisingly fervent rant. He'd been expecting some kind of slightly superior little speech. A small patronizing pat to the head, maybe. Even some kind of pitying description of his own _worthlessness._ Now, though...

Now he was _disarmed._ He stared at the auror dumbly for a very long time. The whole situation felt so alien to him that he could not even begin to imagine how to behave towards the other man, how to approach this creature who had seen _him_ as he was. Who'd _looked_ into the very depths of his dark soul, seen the monster within and was still right here, beside him.

He discovered, much to his astonished discomfort, that he wanted to... _reach out._ Engage in some kind of friendly exchange with this intense, generous man whom he'd never, not in a million years, would have guessed Potter could become. He wanted to allow himself the chance to get to know this man who found him... _worthy._

He didn't know how to do it, though. So he remained were he was, frozen to the spot and silent, like the grave, as every second slowly stretched into another.

He was painfully aware of his own social inadequacies. He'd always been dishearteningly cognizant of the fact that he was a total _failure_ when it came to friendly interaction. He could not _think_ of a single thing to say to his companion that could possibly indicate his _changing perception _of their association... Thankfully, the man in question had no such problems. He'd flopped inelegantly against the back-rest of his chair and proceeded to wait for some kind of answer to his words. After a second of silence, those eyes of his became thoughtful. Calculating. Bright like jewels...

Silence grew around the both of them like a suffocating shroud seemingly intent on trapping them within it's disconcertingly anxiety-inducing folds.

Potter looked at him through it all. Expectantly at first, then in a strange, measuring way. Slowly that emerald-colored gaze turned more and more speculative...

After a while the look began to morph into a sudden kind of rueful understanding until, _finally_, some words broke off the uncomfortable impasse:

"Severus... are you alright? You've gone frighteningly quiet"

He squirmed in his chair. Afraid to move away. Afraid to speak aloud. Afraid to take this chance only to find out that, despite his own healthy dose of paranoid distrust, the child had managed to get under his skin with trickery in his mind...

What if he accepted Potter's _alleged_ _friendship_ and the boy laughed in his face?. What if he placed his trust in the wrong hands again?. What if this was some kind of very elaborate revenge, meant to break him with its twisted cruelty?...

Black eyes clashed with the swirling emotions so clearly displayed across that verdant gaze.

It was obvious that Potter was waiting for him to say something. To do something. Those eyes were filled with a strange kind of patient exasperation that, somehow, portrayed affection, care and the kind of tempered strength that might, just _might,_ manage to survive through the viciousness of his own foul temper. If there was ever a man other than Luc himself able to stand the pressure of becoming a friend of his... it could be this one.

He took a long, deep breath then. His thin lips parted and his heart pounded so fiercely within his emaciated chest that he fancied he could feel it battering the veins on the inside of his too-thin wrists.

"I never _thanked_ you for returning my wand, Mr. Potter. I... I'd like to do so now. It was very... _considerate..._ of you to think of returning it to me at this point.

I know that I might have come across as a bit _ungrateful_, at the time. But I was deeply... touched!" He said it all in a strained little voice that couldn't make it past a whisper. Then he froze. Awaiting, with the absolute terror of one who's been mostly disappointed by others, for the ax to fall were it may. It didn't fall immediately, though...

He'd blinked at least four times before he understood that the expression he was seeing slowly coming into blossom across the golden features of the gryffindor was not one of triumphant contempt. No...

It was an expression more akin to exultant _relief._ It was the kind of _joy_ that he'd so rarely managed to inspire in others that he'd failed to recognize it at first sight.

It became more and more obvious as it grew: a kind of glowing _delight_ that seemed to fill the whole body in front of him with a buoyant effervescence. It was the very same sort of exuberant _euphoria_ that Severus himself had never managed to feel outside of a Potions Laboratory.

A strong, calloused hand shot out towards him. It enfolded his cold, trembling fingers with the warmth of about a thousand sunny mornings and squeezed them gently, but with a firmness that indicated he would _not_ be _allowed_ to back away from this now. Whatever _this_ might be...

"You are _welcome,_ Severus. To _all_ of it. It's _yours,_ you see?. It's yours and you can _have_ _it._ Just... _reach_ _out,_ all right?. You reach out and I... I'll catch you. _ALWAYS!._ I promise!..." Potter fairly gushed with evident contentment and he felt lighter then. _Relieved._ Floored by the strange terror that he felt at that very moment...

He felt also _grateful._ To the boy, for accepting him. To himself, for having found the courage to reach out. To the fact that _this_ _life_ that he'd been so ready to abandon could still offer him something new and amazing. Something _magical_. Something that he could, one day, come to value greatly.

He realized then that he _wanted_ to _open_ this door that lead to Potter. He wanted to try and see were it might lead him...

He understood that he needed to step away from his past, abandon the trapped man he'd been for the last couple of decades and become... maybe a _little_ more open to others. A little _less_ bitter and harsh. A little less... _alone_, if he could...

It was time to leave the war behind, where it belonged. Time to _forget_ the people who were no longer here. Time to _forgive_ those who had wronged him so long ago.

More importantly, though, it was time to forgive _himself_, or at least try...

He had _failed_ to die, against all expectations. He was _alive_ and _whole_ and... mostly _free_. He was beginning to understand that he might have a future that didn't involve torture of any kind. Or groveling at the feet of another powerful master. It was time then to see if he could make his life finally _better_ by forgetting all those principles that had failed him so completely in the past.

He'd been so _careful_. He'd protected himself so much that he... he'd ended up alone. Isolated. Hurt...

He'd had no one apart from Luc and Draco, Cissy...

He'd almost _died_ in the arms of an enemy. He'd been _abandoned_ by everyone around him. Believed to be a traitor. He'd been _reviled_ and _unwanted_ by his peers, by his students, by everyone who'd ever met him. He didn't _want_ to return to a life that had ended that badly...

It was clear to him that he needed to take some chances if he wanted things to change, chances like _this_ one. He should _attempt_ to open up to those who seemed to want him and forget the ones who'd never truly cared for his person.

He needed to see if, by risking himself a little more this time around, he could _finally_ manage to find a small measure of that all-elusive... _shelter_... that he'd never before managed to secure for himself. Maybe he could do it this time. Maybe it was as simple as Potter claimed: An offer of friendship extended and accepted at face value. A small step forward at a time...

He'd taken worse risks with his life before. Far worse...

Maybe both of them deserved to calm down and see where they'd end up if they _tried._ If they truly, _genuinely_, _tried_ to become... _friends_...

TBC...


	19. Chapter 19

_**THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 19**_

Attempting to become a friend of Potter's was a truly _disorienting_ experience. The boy was a strange mix of eagerness and intensity that sometimes frightened him.

There were times when the gentleness with which he was being treated lodged in his throat, like an unmovable stone. He'd never _experienced_ anything like this. Never!.

He'd been friends with gryffindors before. He'd been close to Lily and Minnie, both. He'd loved Albus like a father. He'd believed that he understood the lion's approach to friendship pretty well, for a slytherin, but... now he wasn't really certain if he did.

Potter was a never-ending source of truly devastating consideration, he was attentive and courteous. He was witty, funny, protective. He was utterly _disarming..._

Over the last few days, Severus had discovered that the auror was quite willing to _indulge_ him to the point of outright pampering.

He'd been offered trips to every single wizarding location there was and, when he'd rejected every one of those out of hand, the boy had started to take him out into the muggle world. They'd shared small, peaceful walks around the nearby park. A quiet dinner at the Indian restaurant down the road. A trip to the theater, where Severus had been moved almost to tears over the performance of Les Miserables, while the boy sat quietly beside him: bright green eyes fixed upon his pale face with a tender, affectionate smile...

He'd been _plied_ with his favorite foods until he'd been ready to burst. He'd been taken to about a hundred different book-shops and _allowed_ to almost drown under the weight of the books that he'd settled down to read right there and then...

Potter always chuckled quietly as he sat beside Severus' chosen chair, usually located in a solitary corner near the end of whichever shop they were visiting at that moment and _always_ facing the door.

The boy waited for him patiently, seemingly content enough to just... _hover..._ around. It had made Severus deeply uncomfortable at first and he'd attempted more than once to rush through his reading in order to be... _considerate..._ with his new friend.

Potter had seen straight through him, though.

"It's all right, Severus. You can take your time, you know?. Watching you read is kind of soothing. You look so... _peaceful _with your head buried in a book that it's a crime to cut your enjoyment short when there's no need for that"

Slowly he'd learned to relax and take the gryffindor at his word. It was true that the boy never, not once, had complained. Whenever Severus' feet would stop beside the door to a book-store the auror simply laughed and opened the door for him with polite, almost mischievous mirth. He even whistled tunelessly, under his breath as he insisted on carrying the slytherin's choices to their selected seats.

The boy seemed to spend an unusual amount of time simply... _contemplating..._ Severus' own dark head, as it bent towards his tome, in a way that always left him reeling and slightly anxious.

Sometimes Potter leafed trough a magazine or two. He walked around the aisles, running a distracted finger over the glossy spines of the stacked books as he passed them.

Usually, though, he'd lose himself in the music section, whiling his time away there: huge earphones in place, head bobbing energetically up and down, as he followed the rhythm of whatever it was that he liked to listen to...

Every now and then their routine shifted minutely and their days would include some strange and mostly terrifying experience. Potter was a bit of a thrill-seeker. He _loved_ to climb onto a strange contraption that the muggles called _Ferrari_ and _drive_ the thing so fast that Severus always wished he'd had the good sense of refusing to accompany the little menace.

The auror was, literally, crazy. He liked to weave in and out of packed lanes, as if he believed himself to be virtually indestructible. He drove with only one hand on the wheel, huge smile plastered all over his face and a sly, bright expression turning those emerald eyes of his into veritable pools of devilish enjoyment.

"Calm down, Severus!. There's no need to leave nail-marks all over the upholstery, I swear to you that I'm in control of this thing. Nothing is going to happen to you while I'm here. Relax, will you?. Feel the wind on your hair and the sun warming us both, watch the world go past us and... be jolly!"

Severus felt invariably like growling at the idiot that being jolly was most probably against his very nature. Particularly while he trembled, with fear for his life, as he was being driven at insane speeds inside a muggle monstrosity painted in gryffindor colors.

Not everything Potter did was death-defying, though. He liked to cook at home. He wasn't particularly good at it, but... he made up for his many deficiencies in skill with unbridled enthusiasm.

They had started to cook together, after the first time Severus snapped at the child that he was mangling the leeks so badly that they'd be useless on the pot. Now he generally chopped up and prepared all ingredients, while the menace proceeded to throw them haphazardly into a pan.

It made for a calming and very... _homely..._ way to spend their evenings, one that he found particularly pleasing. The familiar rhythm of ingredient preparation reminded him of potion brewing and, although the chatty and slightly disorganized company couldn't possibly compare to Draco's highly skilled and quiet precision, Severus was nevertheless reminded of the millions of hours spent brewing in tranquil contentment with his godson...

Every afternoon they stopped at a market, on their way back home, and _argued_ over the merits of this or that other vegetable. Discussed the possibility of buying chicken versus beef. Or pork, fish or, even something utterly bland but -apparently- healthy enough called Tofu. What a terrible choice that had been!... He shuddered every time he even thought of that horrible squishy stuff.

They decided invariably on some kind of terrifyingly sweet pie for desert and it was all so very... _domestic..._ that he couldn't help the thought that _this_ was how a _family_ behaved. _These_ were the kind of things that _partners_ did together...

_This_ was something that he'd never, _ever,_ done before with any of his other friends. With anyone, really... and he found the whole experience mildly unnerving.

He was astounded by the fact that they rarely fought, although their tastes and opinions seemed to be about as far away from each other as they could possibly be. Where he was reticent and mostly reserved, Potter was usually chatty and enthusiastic. Where he enjoyed reading, the boy preferred music: the louder the better, apparently. Where he wanted mainly quietude, Potter was always on the go. Constantly distracted by this or that other project. Or thought. Or memory... The boy was feverishly active. Happy. Alive. Excitable...

Some things were very strange though. There were moments that turned inexplicably difficult between them. Looks that became puzzlingly guarded in the blink of an eye. Touches that lingered on his hand, on his wrist or his shoulder. Sometimes even his cheek was gently patted, or the corner of his mouth...

There were also smiles: blinding, glowing, heartfelt ones that didn't seem to have a specific reason for appearing, but that regularly illuminated the child's features nevertheless.

There was peace between them and there was, surprisingly, _happiness..._ a happiness that didn't seem to have any particular source. Or a structure of some kind: a beginning or an end. Theirs was a happiness that simply... existed.

He remembered with a special sort of fondness the first time he'd tasted popcorn. What a wonderful, _amazing_ muggle achievement, that was!.

Potter had decided that he needed to experience the unmatched joy of watching _Television._ He hadn't been particularly thrilled with the idea, as the word reminded him of his father and his pals: drinking themselves into a stupor while contemplating, with almost bovine attention, the evolutions of some men running wildly behind a ball. Or the revolting shenanigans of scathingly dressed women cavorting with equally scathingly dressed men...

Surprisingly, the gryffindor hadn't picked up on his reticence or, more likely, had decided to ignore it altogether. He'd insisted on dragging Severus to a shop that sold a frighteningly unrecognizable piece of black metal and then proceeded to poke him for a preference on this size or that other, until he'd pointed at the nearest thing that he could see, in exhausted exasperation, and snarled:

"That one, Potter!"

After that had come a bizarre walk down the local Tesco's aisles that had veered off their usual haunts for veggie and meats, for the very first time. He'd been introduced then to what the rest of the shop looked like and he'd been... absolutely shocked.

He could not recognize most things and he was actually a half-blood. The very concept of just how... out of contact... he truly was with his own heritage became a fountain of never-ending amusement to his companion. The boy seemed to take Severus' reluctant reintroduction to muggle _technological_ _advances_ as a challenge and appeared to obtain a truly inexplicable enjoyment out of shocking him with one astonishingly alien device or other.

He'd discovered thus the wonders of the microwave. The dishwasher. The mp3 player. The Blu-ray player. The mobile phone... the list was simply too long to start enumerating the lot. Some of them were mere improvements on things that he remembered from his own childhood. Other's, though, were just... mind-boggling.

He'd gaped like an idiot over the _computer a_nd that wonderful _thing_ they called _The_ _Internet..._ He'd loved the very concept of having a limitless source of knowledge at his fingertips at all times. Millions, and millions, and even more _millions_ of books... All of them available for his perusal at the touch of a button... wonderful... It was an absolute _marvel._

He could not imagine why it hadn't occurred to anybody that _this_ was a fantastic thing to copy from the muggles. It'd be perfect for the students if Hogwarts ever managed to implement something like it...

Potter had settled on a film that he'd apparently watched before for Severus' first introduction to the TV. It had awfully strange people fighting wars up in space.

They all looked mostly odd. A bit like a house elf, but taller. Some even had the funny ears, too. Others wore strange orange uniforms and some spoke in a guttural kind of language that the boy called _Klingon..._

The thing that had stuck with him, though, had been the popcorn. It was fluffy and white. It popped madly inside a bag that Potter had dropped in the microwave, filling the whole house with the most incredible aroma...

He'd been astonished by the smell. By the fact that the truly uninspiring, little paper-pouch that the boy had shook under his nose with a playful smile had actually managed to produce a smell rich enough to surprise him.

By the time the bag had been opened, revealing its content to his widened eyes, he'd been more than slightly impressed by this thing that Potter assured him was... _essential_ when it came to T.V watching.

They'd settled on the leather couch with a headache-inducing yellow bowl filled to bursting with a veritable mountain of white fluff and the film started to play. Potter's attention seemed lost in the screen within a second and he allowed himself to look down curiously. Staring, as if transfixed, at the contents of that bowl...

It did look... sort of soft. It had a very thin, yellowish patina coating the surface of most individual pieces, something the auror had assured him was nothing more sinister than a smidgen of butter and some salt. A small smattering of powdered black pepper had been added at the last second to the whole thing. Potter having apparently remembered, from whichever forgotten memory he'd lifted the information off Severus' own mind, that he had a penchant for the flavor.

He wondered what it'd taste like. It looked... too strange to be anything other than sweet and he shuddered at the thought of some sort of butter-peppery mint ball or some other kind of even more unthinkable atrocity along those lines.

A sudden flashback to Albus' blissful enjoyment of those disgusting lemon drops of his brought an unwanted volley of pain-filled memories to his battered heart and he felt himself pale. No matter how wonderful the smell of it might be... he decided in that second to avoid the thing altogether.

Potter's hand chose that very moment to grab a handful of it, though, and the contrast between that tanned skin and the almost snow-white perfection of the puffs struck him as quite beautiful, for some reason...

His eyes became glued to those fingers. Focused on them so intently that he didn't even notice it when their owner turned around to stare at him questioningly.

"Severus?"

He startled as he heard his name being called. His gaze rose, cheeks tingeing with a slight rosy color at being caught staring... He could not explain even to himself this odd fascination that he was having with the corn. How could he possibly explain it to the gryffindor?.

There was a very odd look in those green eyes. The very air around them seemed to have thickened and he could not understand why his blood was pounding with force enough to make him breathless.

He was mortified by the inexplicable... _strangeness..._ of the whole situation and he squirmed in his seat, deeply uncomfortable.

"I... I am sorry, Mr. Potter. I seem to be unusually... _enthralled..._ with this _popcorn_ of yours"

The film continued to play across the huge screen as the boy seemed to measure him, in the sickeningly tense silence that followed his embarrassed attempt at an explanation.

Huge green eyes blinked slowly. They darkened steadily, visibly becoming more and more intense. Frighteningly focused, worthy of a snake charmer...

Severus felt suspended within the moment. Snared. Afraid... He couldn't rationalize what was happening. _Why_ it was happening and the whole situation became inexplicably fraught with all kinds of invisible dangers that he felt compelled to escape.

His trembling right hand shot out to grab the armrest of the sofa in preparation to help haul himself up into a standing position. He was intending to find _refuge_ for a second or two within the relative safety of the kitchen when the boy's own hand suddenly stopped him.

Tanned digits curled around his thin wrist with a strength that _tried_ to be gentle, even though it was actually succeeding in restricting his freedom of movement.

"Where are you going, Severus?" The boy's tone was roughened with some kind of deeply felt emotion. It was not anger, no. But it wasn't happiness, either. What it was, though, Severus could not tell. For he had _never_ encountered it before reflected in the voice, or the eyes, of anybody else...

His throat dried as if he'd walked through the desert all afternoon long. He was truly spooked now and soon it became obvious to him that his alarm showed on his face.

Potter looked at him intently. Calloused thumb rubbing soothingly against that spot in his inner wrist where his pulse was pounding wildly. Thick eyelashes veiled and then exposed the utterly _riveting_ expression that had appeared within those darkened green eyes in an hypnotically rhythmic pattern.

He was so busy freaking out that he didn't even realize that he had started trembling until the gryffindor frowned.

"Severus, are you cold?. You are shaking like a leaf!"

He looked down then, frowning at himself. He could _feel_ his face flaming with embarrassed confusion. He couldn't understand his odd reaction. He was _bewildered_ at himself, _unbalanced._ He was in need of... a _reprieve_.

He attempted to tug himself free of the boy's contact, but the fingers that held him seemed to have turned into steel. Potter's other hand dropped it's handful of fluffy popcorn back into the bowl before lifting the whole thing away and placing it firmly on the coffee table.

The auror turned fully towards him then. Emerald gaze gentle and concerned. Wide chest agitated with an anxious kind of very shallow breathing. Dark hair wild...

Both his arms were seized carefully. A pair of wide palms settled, over the thick cloth of his dark shirt, to burn an excruciatingly warm path of sheer fire all along the outer lines of his thin forearms. And arms. And shoulders...

He realized dimly that the other man was attempting to... _calm_ him, but his actions were so _uncomfortably_ _intimate_ that he was only compounding Severus' discomfort.

It was a strange and... utterly alien situation to find himself in. Normally he would have freed himself from the unwanted contact with a cutting reply and a satisfyingly delivered punch to the nose of his bold... _aggressor._

He'd never been held thus by a friend before, not really. Not beyond a manly pat to the shoulder or two...

Albus had indulged in a few hugs now and then, usually around Severus's birthday or Christmas.

Luc tended to be... mostly unconcerned with the whole touchy-feely thing and Draco... Draco was very tactile, of course. But he was also the person Severus felt most comfortable with in all the world...

He'd never had to _analyze_ his godchild's actions. He'd never had to suspect or interpret them, nor had he ever found himself in the situation of needing to actually attempt the harrowing ordeal of _adapting_ his own behavior to them.

This was Potter, though. POTTER!. He was _attempting_ to forge a _friendship_ with the man. He couldn't possibly reject the auror's friendly attempt at... _consoling_ him, no matter how unhelpful it turned out to be.

So he stiffened and decided to... _endure._.. the contact with a stoic kind of resolution that almost immediately had the undesired effect of turning his whole body into rigid, unpliable stone.

The boy's hands settled on his shoulders. Deep green eyes searching his own for something that he wasn't even sure he could deliver. Explanations for his utterly bizarre behavior were truly beyond him at the moment.

Disconcertingly, though, Potter seemed to understand exactly what was going on. He appeared to be calm enough, for once. In control. Perfectly at ease with _both_ the whole unusual situation and Severus' own reactions to it, by the look of things.

"You don't _know_ what's happening... Do you, Professor?. You are totally petrified!. Your heart is going a mile a minute and your palms are sweating. You've got the look of a man about to die of sheer terror and your eyes are so _confused_ that is killing me to watch you flounder like this...

You are _afraid_, but you don't know _why_ and you can't bring yourself to trust me enough to _lean_ on me, do you?"

He was astonished at the accuracy of that softly spoken summation of his current state of mind. He'd have been far more grateful if all that insight had come with the even more helpful realization that he needed some space to... sort himself out.

Potter, as usual, was singularly blind to any option that included offering him distance. The boy attempted instead to push him out of the comforting boundaries that had always dictated his behavior and decided to come even closer. Muscled arms surrounded his slight figure unexpectedly and then proceeded to push him insistently against that _wide_ and disconcertingly _strong_ chest with a gentle and careful pressure.

He resisted, utterly flustered. Unable to bring himself to accept any further physical... _intimacy..._ with the man. He was not a five year old in need of a fatherly hug, he was a grown up man of forty!. He couldn't believe that he was actually having a bloody _nervous_ _breakdown_ because of a fluffy, perfectly inoffensive-looking mountain of popcorn.

He glared at the boy with enough venom to find himself reluctantly released and then glared at the yellow bowl that contained the cause for all this... _drama_ with even more poisonous displeasure.

The thing sat there on the table, within arm-reach of him, and he suddenly could not stand the thought of how ridiculously he was behaving.

He'd faced _VOLDERMORT,_ for Salazar's sake!. He was being beyond stupid about this... _muggle_ _snack._ What must Potter be thinking of him now?.

The boy must surely be wondering what kind of nutcase he'd decided to harbor in his flat and offered his friendship to... He must now be totally convinced that he'd _wasted_ four long years of his life trying to bring an absolute madman back to consciousness.

He almost growled in vexed exasperation with himself and his hand rose determinedly towards that bloody bowl of fluffy nonsense.

He grabbed a single, surprisingly hard piece and attempted to squish it between thumb and forefinger. To his further bewilderment, he discovered then that the thing was not yielding. It remained firmly un-squished.

He frowned down at it. Brought it up towards his face and examined it closely. The rich aroma that emanated from the treat made his mouth water, but still he doubted. He was abnormally suspicious of it. It just looked so... _odd!._

Beside him, Potter chuckled and his attention shifted focus once again. Black eyes clashed with bright emerald and he discovered that the strange and discomfiting tension that had risen between them seemed to have vanished.

There was nothing at all puzzling about the gryffindor's expression now. It showed crystal-clear amusement. The kind that came with a bright smile and a slightly indulgent air to one's gaze. The kind that told him that nothing was wrong with their... _friendship,_ regardless of how _weirdly_ he'd behaved this evening...

"Go on, Severus, try it. I'm almost sure that you are going to love it"

He responded to the barely-there challenge he'd perceived in the words. To the devil-may-care attitude that he saw so clearly reflected in those eyes. To the smile that curved those lips into a rose-painted expression of reassurance.

His spindly fingers rose towards his own lips slowly. So very, _very_ _slowly_, that it seemed as if time itself had stopped. He was barely able to blink. Widened black eyes became lost to everything around him, except the ever-darkening intensity that was slowly appearing once again within the verdant pools of his companion's gaze. The more he looked into it, the more nervous that he felt, but also... the more certain.

There were frantic butterflies fluttering wildly inside his belly. There were wild horses pounding through his veins. There was a breathless, thickened, almost otherworldly lassitude filling his mind. His body. His whole consciousnesses, with not a though or fear. With nothing but the emotions and sensations that anchored him firmly to this time and this place. To this company. To this moment...

The white kernel in his hand reached his lips finally and he popped it past them with a small sense of trepidation. Potter looked on, bizarrely still. Transfixed even, but he didn't have much time to ponder on the reasons for the child's obvious entrancement. Not after the single piece of heaven that he'd just placed in his mouth started to regale his taste-buds with the glory of it's incomparable flavor.

He could not _believe_ how wonderful it tasted. Dear Salazar!... Why had he _never_ discovered this... _amazing,_ wondrous _thing_ before this moment?...

His eyes widened first in shocked reaction to the incredible sensations that he was experiencing, then they closed instinctively, when he lifted his head up slightly: long neck exposed and Adam's apple bobbing, as he rolled the piece of popcorn inside his mouth, exploring the surprisingly pleasant taste of it further.

The buttery flavor had a slightly peppery sharpness adding an absolutely exquisite counterpoint to the crunchy, delicious inner core of the corn itself. He was barely aware of the thrumming sound of pleasure that he made as he finally swallowed. But Potter's sudden, loud gasp startled him enough to open his eyes once more and stare at the gryffindor questioningly.

Intriguingly, the auror seemed _flustered,_ somehow. He looked inexplicably feverish. His chest was heaving, as if he'd just run a marathon, and those eyes of his were alive with something akin to a conflagration of intense, fiercely felt emotions.

"I take it that you... really, _really,_ like popcorn... Don't you, Professor?" The tone was gruff like sandpaper, but the words were inoffensive enough and he was too busy grabbing another handful of that fluffy goodness to wonder about what on Earth was wrong with the boy now.

"This thing is... it's just... _incredible._ I can't believe that you've been _hiding_ this from me, Potter!" He stuffed a fistful of it in his mouth and sighed in utter bliss. Movie and friend and creepily strange tension, all of it was forgotten for the moment, while he allowed himself to _bask_ in the _divine_ pleasure that was this... _popcorn._

Somewhere near his right shoulder Potter chuckled quietly. Soft sniggers filled the air all around him bringing him... not worry, no. Not fear, either. But a very new and not completely unwelcome sense of _contentment..._

He felt the boy move closer, burrowing under his arm. Hesitatingly at first and then, once the child realized that he was too _mellow_ to complain about the inappropriateness of the liberty, that warm body settled itself more firmly against him, becoming literally plastered all along the right side of Severus' own frame and even having the _audacity_ to place that wild mop of hair squarely against his shoulder...

The bowl of popcorn came with the boy, though. So he couldn't complain much. Busy, as he was, with the very satisfying task of slowly devouring the whole contents of that yellow, plastic container...

The volume of the television was turned up a few more decibels and they returned to watching the strange shenanigans of all those aliens on the screen. Every now and then, Potter laughed. He aahhed and oohheed, too. He squirmed a bit and gave off too much heat...

All in all that had been an incredible experience. One they had adopted as their preferred method of spending the later parts of their evenings, once dinner had been done with and all the dishes were cleared away. Severus had even grown fond of all the odd films that Potter invariably watched. But nothing, absolutely nothing in this life, could compare to the unmatchable _perfection_ of popcorn...

"Severus?"

His name, being so very gently called, brought him back to Earth and he blinked slowly. Dark eyes turned away from the empty wall that they'd been blindly contemplating to settle on the speculative expression that had appeared over the auror's masculine face.

The boy was leaning against the door of his bedroom. Having obviously knocked and been... _ignored,_ he must have opened it in order to check on him.

Severus was surprised to find himself _unruffled_ by the fact that his precious privacy had been breached in that manner. He thought the action to be actually quite thoughtful, caring even.

They were obviously becoming closer, more at ease with one another. Maybe too _at_ _ease..._

"Yes, Mr. Potter?"

The green eyes danced at the half-hearted sharpness of his tone and a smile that was too curious for the boy's own good curved those lips upwards:

"What were you thinking about, professor? You looked... _happy_"

He was not really shocked by the question. Potter liked to ask him things. He did it non-stop now about everything and anything that crossed his constantly shifting thoughts, he'd grown used to the intrusion of the auror's unquenchable curiosity. It reminded him a bit of Luc and that settled the niggling doubts that sometimes assaulted him about the fact that this... this _thing_ that was growing so fast and so... _easily..._ between the two of them wasn't like any other friendship that he'd ever shared with another. Not at all. It was far more _unnerving._ Far more _confusing._ Far more _intrusive_ and just... plainly more _intimate_ than any other relationship that he'd ever allowed himself to have...

Shaking his dark head gently, in order to vanish those unsettling thoughts, he placed the book that he'd been reading on the mattress with its opened pages facing down, against the covers, to mark his place without having to close the thick volume altogether.

"I was thinking of popcorn, if you must know"

Uproarious laughter exploded in the doorway, bringing his lowered head upwards once again.

"Now I'm wounded!. See what you've done?. I don't think there's anything more pathetic than finding oneself jealous of a small, and inanimate piece of buttery corn"

He frowned then, unable to feel totally comfortable with that inexplicably _insinuating_ choice of words. Potter used sentences like that regularly. He appeared to do it... _innocently_ enough, but Severus couldn't, for the life of him, shake off the feeling that he was being... quite _inappropriately_ teased.

Swallowing down his slight discomfort, he attempted a small smile that didn't really make it to his eyes.

"But then popcorn is a heavenly thing, Mr. Potter, whereas you... you are _only_ a _gryffindor_. Feeling jealousy towards the superior things that surround you is a perfectly natural reaction. You see?"

The inelegant snort that he obtained in response managed to calm down his discomfort. He was unaccustomed to receive people in his bedroom. He could not shake the thought that it was somehow... _indecent_ of him to remain seated on his bed while the other man hovered at the door.

He attempted to convince his prudish mind of the fact that it was seeing ghosts where there were none. He'd shared a dorm with another six boys during the whole of his schooling, for crying out loud!. It mattered not that he hadn't liked that experience, either, or that he'd tended to spend as little time as possible locked in there as he could. The point was that he'd been exposed to this kind of situation before. There was no need at all to feel quite this... _unsettled._

"I take it that your friends have left?" He attempted to issue the question in a nonchalance tone. Reluctant, as he was, to show his use of it as a means to re-direct the auror's attention back towards the main parts of the flat.

Those green eyes settled over him appraisingly.

"You could have joined us for longer, you know?. Ron and Hermione would have loved visiting with you properly. They see me every other day, after all. They came all the way out here _specifically_ to say hello to _you"_

His right eyebrow shot up to his temple in open disbelief.

"I'm certain that they have better things to do than _suffer_ through the ordeal of finding something polite to say to me. I saw no reason to _force_ them to do so. I'm the guest here, after all. You have every right in the world to entertain whomever you see fit"

Potter sighed. Tanned hand shooting upwards, to dig deep furrows through that crazy mop of hair.

"Well... as generously _fair_ as all that sounds, Severus, you'll have to change that attitude of yours eventually.

Those two have been my closest friends since I was old enough to actually have any and, as we both grow closer, you'll have to deal with them more and more often. I've learned to live with the Malfoys, haven't I?. They are not so bad, as long as you are not drooling over them with that disgustingly... _sappy..._ expression that you get whenever their names come up in conversation"

He was startled by that utterly bizarre description of himself.

"Sappy? _ME?_ I don't believe my face can do sappy, Potter. It must be against the most sacred principles of nature itself!"

The auror laughed once again. It was a happy and comfortable sound. Contented. At peace...

The smile that came his way then was filled with the kind of tenderness that brought a lump the size of China to his suddenly constricted throat.

"Come on, then. The visitors have left and I've finished clearing the dishes away while you hid from polite society in this den of yours. Now it's movie time, Severus!. Your precious popcorn is getting cold..."

Potter turned around then, leaving the door open behind him, and started walking along the corridor towards the main living room.

Severus watched that wide-shouldered frame retreat with a strange sensation of _gratitude_ filling his own chest almost to bursting point.

_This_ was something that he'd never had before. _This_ was... _precious_ to him, indeed.

He only hoped that he could continue to build on it without stumbling. That, eventually, even the strange uneasiness that niggled at the back of his head every now and then would settle. That he could have this simple kind of joy in his life for a very long time...

It wasn't too much to ask. Was it?...

TBC...


	20. Chapter 20

_**THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 20**_

"I'd love to take you flying"

That worrisome statement forced him to avert his dark gaze from the rather fat cloud that he'd been idly contemplating. He turned his head around and looked at the boy who, with both hands carelessly intertwined through his fingers, was still looking up at the sky: head cushioned in the small dip between his interlocked palms, eyes alive with wishful longing...

"You forget that I've seen you fly, Mr. Potter. You do that even more carelessly than you drive!. I've recently decided that I'm much too young to die, after all..."

That wild mass of hair jerked around. Tanned expression loosing all signs of contemplative tranquility to focus on his own face with a sharpness that startled him.

"Really?. You've no idea of how glad I am to hear you say that!"

If he hadn't before, then the blinding brilliance of the smile that had just _erupted_ on that young face out of seemingly... nowhere... would have certainly clued him up.

"You make it sound as if I've been suicidal or something equally ridiculous!"

"Weren't you, Severus?. Your own wish to remain _lost_ caused us the most trouble when we tried to bring you back and when we finally managed _that_ you were constantly on edge. You were absolutely miserable... Your desire to be _punished_ was so strong that the Felix Felicis landed us straight into that vile charade of hate-filled revenge, for Godric's sake!"

He could tell that the auror was upset. Truly, inescapably, blatantly agitated by their conversation. It was obvious in the slight harshness that turned his voice colder with every word that he pronounced. Plain to see in the ever-increasing rigidity of his body. Absolutely crystal-clear in the sudden, jerky push of nervous, calloused fingers through the wildness of that dark and spiky hair...

Severus' left eyebrow rose towards his temple and he blinked, truly disconcerted. The gryffindor rose suddenly, turning lengthwise towards him and proceeded to hover uncomfortably close to his face, examining him with unnerving intensity.

Not knowing what else to do he stared straight up, into those seemingly endless pools of deep emerald, and felt weirdly flustered. Uneasy. Almost breathless with anxious trepidation.

"You do look much happier now, Severus. More settled. Your health is improving, a bit too slowly for Healer Jone's taste, but it is definitely improving...

I was so worried about you in those first few weeks. I think we all were. You were so... suspicious of everyone. Of _everything_...

It was very difficult to help you, but it was even worse watching you flail while we were all right there, ready to catch you if you needed it. Waiting for you to _lean_ on us!"

He swallowed thickly as every word settled over his chest with the weight of a slab of granite. He'd never tried to see those early days through someone else's eyes. Now he wondered just how hard things had really been for those around him. For Luc and Cissy, for Draco... The image of a pale-faced Poppy Pomfrey, plump cheeks shiny with clear tears as she ran towards him flashed through his mind's eye, for some reason, and he shuddered uneasily.

He attempted to shift his head slightly away. Trying to put a smidgen more of distance between their faces, but the boy's head simply followed his own. He was extremely uncomfortable with how close they both were. With how intently that green gaze was settled upon him. With how very clearly he could perceive the faint aroma of Potter's aftershave. Feel the warm puffs of air that the boy exhaled, with every single breath that he took, straight against the side of his own cheek and neck, like some kind of soft, ghostly caress.

"Those days are over, I think. As impossible as it might sound I do believe that I am now on the way to recovery. I've made my peace with the idea that this _strange_ life that I'm living now, no matter how unexpected it might be, is real. It's not a trick of yours. Not a trap at all. It's just... _different_ from what I was expecting. _Better_, in many ways...

I'm glad I survived to see this. Glad that you won, in the end, Mr. Potter. Glad that you managed to _live_, too, despite the odds against you.

There!, I've said it now, all right?. I hope it won't be necessary for us to have this conversation ever again, if you don't mind. I want to look forwards now, not back. I think I'm sick of the past and this is too beautiful a day to spoil it with dark memories of the war..."

Potter's eyes turned even softer and a smile that was tender enough to make him truly fret curved the edges of those young lips. A daring index finger had the audacity of pushing a single lock of long, dark hair away from his temple and he struggled to swallow the ever-growing lump that had decided to log itself inside his damaged throat.

"I suppose you have a point there, Severus. I don't want to spoil our lovely morning with any more gloominess, either... So, what do you say to my idea of taking you up for a spin?. I promise I won't drop you, I'll even go as far as giving you my word that I shall not speed. We'll keep low, if you want. Just... let me take you up, please?..."

He was uncomfortable with the amount of _longing_ that he could plainly see within those verdant orbs. It was patently obvious that the gryffindor felt strongly about this crazy plan of his, but...

"I was never a strong flier, Mr. Potter. I don't really enjoy the activity as much as you do. I've seen you airborne before... I don't think it fair to spoil your delight in something that you are quite excellent at, and obviously adore, in order to accommodate the fears of a reluctant companion. It'd be better if you indulge by yourself. I shall be perfectly fine here, with my cloud-watching and my book"

It was obvious almost instantly that his answer had fallen short of whatever it was that the child had hoped to hear. The green eyes closed very briefly, almost as if to hide a sudden flare of unconcealable pain, and the sunny smile that had graced those lips dimmed noticeably.

A sharp inhalation preceded the kind of short, uneasy silence that brought a worried sort of dread to Severus' mind. Insecurity rose within him and he wondered if this would be the moment when the child finally realized that an aged, bitter ex-Death Eater wasn't worthy enough to become friends with the shiny, precious Saviour of the Wizarding World.

"What if I _want_ to share, professor?. Would it be so awful to grant me this one instant of blind faith?. I love flying!. It's one of my favorite pastimes. It's something that relaxes me, something that has never lost its magic in my mind, no matter how many greater, far more wonderful sights I've been regaled with.

Flying is something that _touches_ _me_. It's something that defines me, in a way. It is a very big part of who I am and what I like. It's something that I want... No. No, I'm not saying this right... It's something that I _need_ to share with you!"

He could not decide if he felt more threatened by the passionate intensity of the tone or by how great was his desire to actually allow himself to _gift_ his cooperation to the child.

He'd never been one for doing anything that he'd been reluctant to commit to, no matter what anyone else said or did about it. Regardless of what Lily might have thought, peer pressure had never managed to bend his strong will in any significant way.

He'd gone dark because he'd been fascinated with defensive sorcery. He'd followed Luc into the Lord's service because he'd believed that doing so would eventually bring him fortune.

He'd never before _desired_ to put another's wishes before his own. Definitely _not_ when those wishes were so out of his own comfort zone that they fell squarely on top of an actual _pet_ _peeve_ of his...

"I don't think that you understand just how much I _detest_ flying, Potter. You'll regret this silly insistence of yours, we'll _both_ regret it!"

The boy chuckled and the strange heaviness of the moment shattered into a million tiny fragments of stillborn possibilities.

"You are so cautious... I've never met another man as reluctant to accept the possibility of failure as you are. If we end up not enjoying ourselves it won't be such a disaster, Severus!. Not everything you do has to be perfect, you see?.

This is about _trying_ something that I like because I want you to!. It's about the idea of you giving me the opportunity to show you something that I value. You don't have to love it. You are even allowed to hate it, but you have to try it first.

I want to _know_ how it feels to fly with you beside me. I'll have the memory of it forever, don't you see?. Even if you only come with me this once I could still close my eyes, while I'm up there, and imagine that we are together"

He did not know how he should respond to that particularly _odd_ statement. It was one more in a long row of comments just like it. He fidgeted uncomfortably, attempting to ignore the fact that it had been uttered. That the tone Potter had used had been strangely... _wishful_. That there was something truly mystifying happening between them...

He couldn't help the feeling that there was more to the auror's idiotic request than met the eye. He could not understand the point of it, really. Could not fathom _why_ the boy would make it into so big a deal.

It was curious, though, and he frowned as he studied the child warily. Conscious for the first time of the fact that their little flying trip seemed to be important enough for the other man to have suddenly turned into a gryffindor-shaped bunch of frayed nerves.

There was a stillness to his companion, an almost breathless suspension of all animation that alerted him to the fact that the boy... the boy was preparing himself for a negative response. He seemed crushed, somehow. Forlorn and sad. The very sight of that down-turned head brought in Severus a very distinctive need to alleviate that inexplicable misery...

He frowned as his mind toyed with the unthinkable concept of agreeing and a sigh that was half-expectation-of-disaster, half-reluctant-surrender rent the air.

"Fine!. But if you drop me, Potter... I swear that I shall find a way to make you pay until the end of time. A very _painful_ and _embarrassing_ way"

The boy laughed, so much and so brightly, that the sound attracted the attention of the few people enjoying the quietude of the park alongside them. Curious looks were sent their way, looks that the boy ignored blatantly but that Severus himself could not dismiss.

He felt sometimes _exposed_ whenever they stepped out of the house together. He didn't know what the muggles made of them and the idea that they must look very _strange_ together didn't want to leave him.

They shared dinner out occasionally. Strolls along the park. Shopping trips... He wondered if everyone around them thought them to be father and son.

They certainly wouldn't look like two old friends enjoying each other's company. The difference between their ages was too obvious for that assumption to take root in anyone's mind.

Potter's unusually _caring_ behavior could give weight to the idea that they were family, only... there were times when the auror touched him quite... _softly._ Too softly, really.

There were times when the youth shattered the illusion of platonic... _anything..._ with some blatant and obviously unrestrained action that would hint at them being something other than merely familiar. Something other than friends, too. Something _other_ altogether...

Potter rose, still laughing. Seemingly truly unaware of the odd looks that he had garnered and dusted himself quickly off. A contented sigh halted the laughter as he turned around to look up, towards the sky, with the focused attention of a man able to read the future itself on the harmless mounds of clouds.

"We have wonderful weather for this!. There's very little wind and it's warm enough for you not to get too cold up there. I'll apparate us to a secluded field I found a while back, it's under Fidelius, you see?. Very private. Protected. No one will see us or disturb us there, Severus. It'll be just the two of us, I promise!"

A bright face turned to examine his own then. Eager bright eyes alive with the kind of pleasure that he himself often found in brewing. There was an unsettling kind of significance to this moment. To _these_ actions. To the fact that he was _allowing_ himself to go along with the auror's crazy plans for the sole purpose of making the boy... _happy_.

He could not ignore the fact that this... _friendship_ of theirs was evolving into something truly strong. Something more important than it should be. Something that he valued, maybe too much, for his own good.

Was there any possibility of diluting the terrifying strength of his... _attachment_ to this youth, somehow?. He doubted it and that very fact managed to make him break into a cold sweat. He was suddenly very afraid, mind wary with the instinctive certainty that he was rushing into total, ruinous disaster. He had never truly managed to retain a gryffindor's regard for long. They had all eventually dismissed him. Or betrayed him. Or demanded impossible, painful things from him...

"Severus?"

He returned to Earth upon hearing that puzzled, worried rendition of his own name. Dark eyes clashed with green and he saw the child's hand extended towards him, palm up, as if in preparation to help haul him into a standing position.

After a second of very obvious doubt, he sat before allowing himself to place his cold palm into the wide, tanned one that belonged to the auror and felt fingers that were way too warm, too strong, concerned... close around his own with careful gentleness.

He'd expected the boy to pull him up immediately but those legs bent down instead, bringing Potter into a kneeling position directly in front of him.

Anxious features searched his. Gentle fingers retained their tender hold over his hand, as if they would never let him go. Never abandon him...

"Severus, are you all right?. You are as cold as ice!"

He was embarrassed by how _weak_ he felt. By how _unsettled_ he'd become with the idea that he was far more attached to the child than he should be. To his utter dismay, he started trembling then so strongly that it became plainly visible to his companion. His teeth rattled and his whole frame shook, in some kind of bizarrely emotional panic-attack that he was totally unable to control.

Potter swore under his breath. Green eyes darkening with something so very close to sorrow-tinged understanding that it felt as if the boy could truly see inside of him. His eyes closed and his head lowered, attempting to bar all contact between their minds, attempting to make himself blind to anything that might inform him of the fact that he was being held in safety. With mercy. That this wasn't the time or place when Lily's child would break him... because this boy would break him someday. He'd leave, just like his mother had done before him, and then... then he'd lose _this._ All of it!. Forever...

"Severus?. SEVERUS!. You've got to open your eyes and look at me, OK?. I don't know what's wrong with you, but you are really frightening me!" There was a pained, troubled urgency to his companion's request that reached him clearly. He didn't wish to worry the boy, he didn't wish to upset him!.

The morning had been so pleasant until now that it was a shame to spoil it with this shameful, utterly ridiculous bout of indulgent self-doubt.

His eyes shot open then: dark, like polished ebony. Beautiful and frightened. But also determined to push forward, no matter how painful or hard. No matter how strongly his own instincts shouted at him to find shelter. To halt this thing that was growing way too fast between them both before he got himself burned...

Following those instincts had lead him absolutely nowhere in the past. He had no intention of listening to them this time around, but having come to that particular decision seemed to be easier said than done.

"I... I am very sorry, Mr. Potter. I seem to be a bit..." He tried to find a word to fit his thoughts, any word, but he couldn't find a single one to explain _this_ that would not also require him to _expose_ his weakening insecurities right alongside it. How could he open himself up that much? How could he not?...

His wan features lost all color at the prospect. Long dark hair blew in the breeze, plastering itself along the bony ridges of his cheekbones and giving his already ashen face the impression of having been carved out of inanimate wax.

Potter's knees shuffled forwards and his hand finally released Severus' own as the auror brought both palms up to frame his shattered face with the same kind of delicate tenderness that one would use to hold the fragile beauty of exquisitely spun glass.

Rough-tipped thumbs brushed a long lock of hair away from his eyes and that emerald gaze focused intently on his own.

"What is it, Severus?"

He could feel those palms warming the skin of his own icy cheeks. Anchoring his consciousness to this moment in time. To this man who now held him. To these eyes that refused to let go of his own gaze...

He tried to swallow, but found himself almost choking on the bitterness that rose from deep within him. He was furious with himself. He was beyond incensed with his own, maudlin thoughts...

He was here, single-handedly _ruining_ their perfectly beautiful morning for no reason whatsoever and he suddenly discovered that he could not abide his own... perfectly unacceptable cowardice.

His lips opened and he exhaled in a rush. Visage ashen and eyes wide as he dared to utter exactly what he thought out, into the open:

"I... I am afraid, Mr Potter. I am desperately afraid!"

Those hands pressed against the sides of his face even more carefully. His head was tilted very slightly, in order to bring his eyes into a more direct contact with the boy's concerned ones.

"You are scared of flying?... Nothing bad is going to happen to you, Severus!. I'd never take you up if I thought I couldn't handle your safety" His hair kept getting in the way and the child kept brushing it off his eyes gently. Every time Potter did that his slightly rough finger-pads seemed to brand Severus' own face with an indelible mark of warmth, of fire...

He was being opened and re-aligned in this moment. Turned inside out and re-formed. He was being held, as vulnerable and broken as he truly was, for the first time. He was being accepted without veils. Without disguise. He was being allowed to... show himself unmasked.

He'd regret it if he allowed the boy to _misunderstand_ what he'd just meant. He'd lose something precious, something that he could not even understand fully himself, if he allowed Potter to carry on believing that he feared flying for a second longer.

Terror seized him then. Terror of the mind-numbing, utterly paralyzing kind. He was contemplating doing the unthinkable here, he was about to play with his heart in the most reckless manner!. He was about to risk his own safety for the promise of a friendship that might not last beyond a moment. He was about to trust the son of his worst enemy with his very fragile, inner core...

He shuddered with anxiety, distressed and horrified with himself. His eyes widened impossibly. His pulse thundered with force enough to sicken him completely, but he swallowed thickly and parted his lips. Determinedly ignoring his own instincts to retreat, he pushed himself further and stepped out into the dark and bottomless abyss that awaited him:

"I am afraid of you and I, Potter. I am unsettled by the depth of this friendship of ours. I do not want to allow you entry into my world only to find you gone tomorrow... I don't think I have the strength to play those kinds of games. Not any longer.

I've always trusted very sparingly. I'm a very difficult and bitter old man, one who doesn't have much in common with you. We both belong to very different worlds. We hold opposing values. I can't help but think that we won't last beyond the month, not really, and I wonder... I wonder if it wouldn't be better for this friendship of ours to end right here, before it grows any deeper. Before it becomes something that you have no intention at all of pursuing and I can't bear to lose..."

The silence that followed those words could have killed him with its tension alone. Potter's face was oddly chalky. He seemed to have frozen into position like a kneeling, devoted vassal, and those eyes shone with a fire that seemed undecided between becoming openly enraged or darkening with rueful, terrifyingly disarming understanding.

A sigh escaped the child's lips. A warm puff of moistened air that fell, like some sort of benediction, over Severus's upturned, trapped, face. His eyes closed then, for he was unable to stare at that tangled mass of hurt, relief, startled-but-cautious joy and sheer, murderous anger that seemed to be swirling, with ever-increasing strength, within the verdant pools of Potter's bright gaze.

The hands that held his face gentled even more if that was possible. Thumbs caressed his temple carefully. Noticeably. Tenderly... and he blinked his eyes open once again.

Potter smiled at him then, killed him with tenderness. Allied his every fear without a single word having been uttered...

"I don't play games like those, either, professor. Not when it comes to you. I don't know what exactly spooked you this badly, but you have to understand this very instant that I am _not_ my mother.

I'm aware that you loved her very deeply and that you don't really see her as I do. It hurts me more than you'll ever know to tell you this, Severus, but it's the truth: She betrayed you in the worst possible manner. She let you down, when you needed her support the most, and she had the actual gall of blaming it all on you!.

She chose between her best friend and the boy she liked, when she shouldn't have allowed my father to force her into _that._ She was not worthy of you there, at the very end, She. Was. Not!. And I won't live in her shadow or pay for her mistakes, not when it comes to _us._

I'm here for myself. As myself. I will not replace _her _or become a copy of her because I AM NOT HER!. That means that I won't let you go. Not ever. Not for any reason. Least of all in order to allow you to _surrender_ to this truly unnecessary insecurity of yours..."

He felt broken by those words. But also saved. He'd been worried by the suspicion that Potter wanted him to _re-enact_ his old childhood friendship with his mother. He hadn't realized until this very moment just how much of a weight the very idea had placed on his shoulders. He didn't think that he could replicate the same naive affection he'd once bestowed upon Lily...

He'd been a child when he met her. He had the hopes of a child. He'd tried to find solace, acceptance and plain, old fashioned understanding in her. He'd come to realize that he'd asked too much of her and she hadn't to be able to deliver...

He'd been a wounded child. But she, herself, had been not and she hadn't been able to understand his almost compulsive clinginess to their attachment. His _need_ to keep their friendship to themselves. His reluctance to share her with any others...

In his misguided attempt to keep her with him forever, he'd only managed to lose her... and the sting of having been abandoned by her had never truly healed. He had loved her and she... she'd allowed him to do so because confronting him with it would had been much more awkward. He'd always assumed she hadn't known, but... looking back on it now with the detachment that age and distance granted him he could plainly see how that last face-saving fact, that he'd held on to for so long, couldn't hold up to scrutiny. Of course she'd known!. _Everyone_ had known...

"I'm not seeking Lily any longer, she's been gone for a long time, Mr. Potter. I have fought two wars since I lost her. I've faced true despair along the way. I've become the kind of monster that she would have never looked at twice, not even out of pity...

I am not the same boy who dared to love her. Not in any way... and, even if I was, _you_ could never be confused or compared with her. You have seen the kind of darkness that she barely managed to glance at. Your eyes might be the same color as hers, but... they've seen a harsher world. They've survived... They can actually see _ME_ in a way that hers never could"

Potter looked away then, hands falling away from Severus' own face and inexplicably trembling knees easing him backwards...

He seemed to have lost all strength. All grace. He suddenly sagged so much that he began to resemble a formless, exhausted lump. For a very small second he managed to remain seated, features rigid and pale digits curled into softly clenched fists. Throat convulsing as it swallowed the visibly choking knot formed by some kind of wounding emotion... Then he allowed his wide back to fall slowly against the ground while his green eyes rose towards the sky, offering Severus a brief glimpse of shattered tears and dark hurt.

"I'd have loved her, I'm sure. Everyone keeps telling me how wonderful she was. How thoughtful and beautiful. How generous. How strong in her convictions. How loyal...

She must have been a veritable fountain of feminine graces. I have her picture, you know?. I've even seen her ghost a couple of times...

She was truly, breathtakingly lovely. Lovely in a way that I shall never be!. Clever too, apparently...

For all that I've managed to achieve what she couldn't, I'm only a boy with an insane amount of luck while she was... truly exceptional...

How many times have you wished that she'd taken Voldemort's offer, Severus? A thousand? A billion? Two?... She could have given me up and she'd have lived. He was willing to spare her. You know that he was. He'd have kept her safe, for you..."

Severus was startled by the unexpected turn their conversation had just taken. Utterly unprepared to answer such question with any modicum of... _rationality_.

He could not believe that the boy had dared to ask him such a thing.

There was a tightness in his throat that he was certain would eventually kill him. It was simply not possible for his fluttering heart to sustain the wild rhythm that it was currently beating at, not for any length of time...

He followed the boy's example and allowed his emaciated body to slump backwards, against the sun-warmed grass. It was utterly disconcerting to look up and see so blue a sky. So sunny a morning. Such a bright, hope-filled canvas against which to rest his own tortured gaze as his mind dwelt among the darkest, most wounding memories that he possessed.

"I believe she wouldn't have been the Lily I loved so deeply, if she'd taken the Lord's offer. For all the grief that her choice did cause me, I have come to accept that it was the only one that wouldn't have destroyed her in the end...

She died, yes. But she did so being faithful to herself and that means that I could _retain_ the memory of her, as she truly was, forever...

I didn't get to see her submit. Or give up and become another victim of fear...

I only ever saw her being brave and true and... courageous, like a lioness!. I think it's best this way. I really do. It took me many years to understand that, even if she'd lived, Lily Evans was never meant for the likes of me..."

He could hear the child shifting. Felt the weight of those green eyes on the side of his face, but he couldn't bring himself to look at them, though. Not yet.

His own gaze had filled with tears for the friend that he'd lost, so stupidly, almost a lifetime ago. He was strangely unwilling to share this aching sorrow with Potter. This was a sadness that belonged to him alone. To Lily... It was a private, mourn-filled second that could only ever belong to a brave flame-haired woman and the lost boy who, trying to love her, had only managed to betray her...

"I have a tendency to destroy everything that I hold dear, Mr. Potter. Maybe you should be wary of _associating_ yourself with me. Lily was only the beginning, after all. Look at what I did to Albus..."

Potter squirmed beside him, upper body rising slightly before turning, once more, towards him. The boy ended up hovering uncomfortably close. Tanned elbow planted firmly on the soft grass and whole chest hovering almost protectively above his supine body while searching emerald eyes forced his own into unwanted collision.

A rogue hand, owner of callused and very daring fingers, rose towards his face. It dried the single stray tear perched at the very edge of his left eye, before it had time to fall and hide within the ebony mass of his long hair... After that heart-stoppingly intimate action the auror kept brushing his hair gently away from his pale face. Trying to soothe him, as if he were a wounded child...

"That has to be the single most stupid, self-pitying thing that I've ever heard you say. It's not even true, for Merlin's sake!. Look at the Malfoys: they are all alive, every single one of them!. They are perfectly healthy and more richer than ever, gleefully enjoying all the perks that come nowadays with a close association to you. Then there is Professor Mcgonagal, I'd bet my right arm that you love her very much. I've seen your memories of her and I could tell that you two were close. She is also doing well. Nothing wrong with that old cat as far as I can tell.

Then there's Madam Pomfrey, Hagrid and that old Professor of yours, Master Gillieu... wasn't that his name?. All of them are fine, too. Shall I continue, Severus?"

He felt chocked by emotion. By discomfort. By the shame of knowing himself to be acting like a maudlin old man. His pulse pounded and his breathing became shallower. Disturbed. Uneasy.

Potter kept quietly brushing his hair aside. A small, rueful smile curving his lips with some kind of broken sorrow. Green eyes sombre and persistent. Golden features set into firm, unyielding lines...

As the moment stretched and the youth remained silent, Severus grew even more discomfited with the whole situation. The closeness between their bodies became truly suffocating. The searching quality within those emerald eyes became an unwelcome intrusion. The barely-there combing of those digits through his hair became an unacceptable liberty that he resented the boy for taking...

Finally he turned his face minutely to the right, forcing his whole head away from it's locked in position. His eyes no longer clashed with the green ones and his hair was puled free...

"Look at me, Severus!" The order was softly voiced, but impossible to ignore. The gryffindor placed one hand on his jaw-bone and turned his face around once more.

He could feel the intrinsic heat in the auror's fingers burn his skin wherever they touched him. He was being more than just... directed back to look upon his companion's face. He was being branded, somehow. Disarmed. He was being unraveled layer by layer. He was being... pursued most insistently and forced out into the open. He was being denied the safe comfort of distance, the luxury of retreating, the chance of pulling away... He was being slowly, so very slowly, turned inside out...

Potter seemed to read him like a book that held no secrets. The smile that curved those lips was excruciatingly tender. It was a soothing, careful thing. A promise and a reassurance all in one.

"Don't hide from me. OK?. Just... don't hide!. I'm not trying to humiliate you, you know?. I'm not dismissing these concerns of yours out of hand, either...

I know how hard this is for you. I also know that you are _ambivalent_ about trusting me completely... I am humbled that you've allowed me to see this much of you, I truly am. But I'm also willing to tell you when you are wrong, Severus. I'll have to!. There won't be a true chance for us unless I do...

You can get really defensive when you feel threatened and you are feeling it right now, are you not?. You are afraid of getting in too deeply and I am pushing you too fast... I see that. I really do. I'm not trying to _scorn_ your misgivings. I'm only attempting to make you to see that, sometimes, you can be... a tad too _dramatic._"

He took a deep breath before allowing himself to utter the next words. He felt unbalanced and on edge. He wanted the conversation halted. He needed to... hide, so badly, that the instinct to lash out at the boy, in order to set himself free, was almost overwhelming his formidable control.

"I don't like it when you do _this"_

Potter blinked very carefully, eyes intent and fingers gentle as they began combing through his dark hair once again.

"When I do what, Severus?"

"You force me to speak aloud. You make me say things that I don't think should be said. You... _claw_ into my emotions and dig them out into the open. It makes me feel... _exposed_!"

A smile curved those young lips, it was a small but bright one. A gift of reassurance.

"You are too beautiful a person to hide among dark corners any longer. I almost lost you once, before I even got to discover the true treasure that you are. You are exposing yourself... yes. I suppose that you are, but you are also safe here. I'm not planning to hurt you or abandon you. I'm not willing to allow another to do so, either...

You need to learn that you deserve better than hiding. That your affections are most certainly returned. That you are worthy of having others come to you, _begging_, for you to accept them instead of the other way around"

He blinked in disconcerted astonishment, not really sure of what to say in answer to that absurd comment.

"You have placed an _extraordinary_ amount of faith upon my person, Mr. Potter. I don't think I'll manage to ever live up to your high expectations"

The auror laughed then and his green eyes turned so soft that they seemed to have melted with affection. The rough-tipped finger-pads settled on the pale skin of his jaw and the expression on that face was both, incredibly patient and filled with intent:

"I have faith enough in you for both of us, Severus. One day you'll have faith in yourself too, I'm sure. I can't wait to see what you'll do with yourself, with this world of ours then.

You have fought for freedom already. You have invented a million and one potions. You have, single-handedly, changed the fortune of the House of Slytherin...

You have the potential and the moral strength to do great things, professor. I just want to be there, right beside you, when you finally, _finally_, _bloom_!..."

TBC...


	21. Chapter 21

_**THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 21**_

It was Luc's owl, Augustus, the one to finally bring a halt to the quietly contented life that he'd managed to find with Potter.

Looking back on it, Severus should had seen it coming the moment the blasted bird refused to alight on the extended arm that he'd raised up for that very purpose. Choosing to fly straight towards the auror's chair and perch himself on the one immediately to the boy's left, instead.

An indignant hoot rent the air when the gryffindor ignored the animal in favor of continuing to stuff his mouth, inelegantly, with the disgustingly runny porridge that he seemed to be so fond of and that invariably managed to turn Severus' own stomach into a painful knot of nauseated dismay.

Feathers ruffled, Augustus hooted once more. Loudly. Impatiently. And the boy finally left his spoon to stare at the owl with gormless befuddlement.

"Are you sure you don't want Severus, old boy?"

He snorted into his cup of tea. Any idiot should be able to understand that a Malfoy's owl _NEVER_ mistook its target. With the sheer amount of back-stabbing that went on within the rarefied world of cut-throat finance that Luc inhabited, to be in possession of any owl that could be easily misled, or tricked into delivering their post into the wrong hands, would be tantamount to either financial or political ruin. Both, in some cases.

As if reading his own thoughts, Augustus hooted indignantly and ruffled his feathers even more

violently. His dark beak snapped warningly in a sharp, displeased motion and he thrust his right leg forwards in owlish huff.

Potter laughed. _Laughed_. The idiot!. Didn't he know that Luc only ever used this particular owl to deliver the most delicate of missives?.

His chest clenched with the most awful premonition of imminent doom as those tanned digits set about to unravel the distinctive gray silk ribbon that the Malfoys always tied their correspondence with.

As soon as it had been relieved of the parchment the owl hooted. Wide brown eyes swiveled slowly to look straight at Severus with a strangely cognizant expression. His stomach dropped then, right down to his booted feet, and a lump the size of Mars lodged in his throat.

He was so preoccupied, watching the bird fly away, that he missed his companion's first look at the letter in question. Only becoming aware of the fact that whatever it carried had been delivered _indeed_ when Potter's incensed growl exploded, like sudden thunder, in the silence of the room.

"That _bastard_!"

He turned startled dark eyes towards the boy. Body rigid in instinctive, defensive readiness to unseen danger and face pale with anxious expectation of disaster.

Luc... this was Luc!. The friend who, so very often, managed to ruin the relative _peacefulness_ of Severus's strange life with his manipulative shenanigans.

Green eyes looked straight at him with the kind utter fierceness that he hadn't seen in days and his heart contracted painfully. A white-knuckled fist waved the heavy parchment, wildly, in front of his face and he could do nothing at all except stare dumbly at it.

Silence fell between them while he waited, poised at the very edge of a cliff that he didn't really want to look down to, for some sort of explanation. Finally, the boy sighed before asking with the kind of harsh tone that he hadn't heard from him in a while:

"Did you _know_ that he was going to try _this?"_

He stiffened in outraged reaction to the tone. Mind buzzing with about a million and one possibilities for Potter's displeasure.

He'd known that Luc was unhappy with the idea of the vow that had initially forced his co-habitation with the auror. He'd suspected for a while that his friend would attempt to free him from it somehow. What he didn't know was... when. Or how.

He blinked very slowly, attempting to gain some extra-time to think and his eyebrow rose instinctively, irritating Potter even further.

"Severus!. Do. Not. Play. Slytherin. Games. With. Me!. Did you _know_ what Malfoy was planning?"

He did not like the look of this. He did not like it at all:

"Unless you are referring to him paying a long overdue visit to that state of his, in France, I'm afraid that I'm still in the dark, Auror Potter. Maybe, if you were kind enough to share the contents of your correspondence with me, I would be able to see if I can assist you further"

The fist that fell with mighty force against the table rattled the whole contents of it. Severus jumped in his seat, utterly unnerved. He'd only ever seen Potter this enraged once before, back when he'd taken that first unaccompanied walk around the neighborhood.

"He is demanding that you return to your duties at once. Has convinced the whole bloody panel of governors to agree with that brainless idea. He apparently met them all "_by_ _coincidence_" at a party that he was hosting and they started to discuss their _concerns_ at your continued _failure_ to present yourself at work.

He is virtually demanding that I escort you to your office by the first of the month or be ready to face a formal inquiry. I can't believe that he had the balls to try something like this!"

Severus was at sea. Completely, irremediably and absolutely _lost._ He could not make either heads nor tails out of all that incomprehensible nonsense. He blinked in bewildered astonishment and attempted to understand what was going on, but...

Other than the obvious, headache-inducing certainty that his friend, his clever and twisted friend, was indeed trying to help him out of what he believed to be _coerced_ _cohabitation_ by removing him from Potter's clutches, Severus could not actually understand anything else!.

He closed his eyes in sorrow. Realizing, without any of it ever needing to be voiced out loud, that his usually dismal luck had finally caught up with him... and now he was about to loose the meager amount of _joy_ that he'd managed to find in recent weeks.

He was reluctant to remain bound to Potter if it was true that Luc had found a way, a _secure_ way, to break the Wizard's Oath that he'd been tricked into swearing, but... he wasn't quite as eager to abandon this new and _contented_ life that he now shared with the gryffindor as he'd once been, either.

He prayed to Salazar for this to be one of those occasions when Luc's help actually worked truly in his favor, instead of turning everything around him on it's head.

"Duties? Governors? My office? Potter... What in the mane of Merlin is going on?"

Startled green eyes, frozen with an odd kind of disconcertion, looked straight at him.

"What do you mean, Severus?"

He floundered on the receiving end of such obvious confusion from the boy. For a second he believed that he must have forgotten something crucial here, somehow. But... no. No...

He was certain that he held no job at all. He'd been in a bloody coma for four years!. He'd seen no one but Potter and a small bunch of well wishers since he'd woken up.

He was a magic-less freak, for goodness sake!. Who the Hell would have been idiotic enough to hire him?.

"What _I _meant is not the issue here, Mr. Potter. The important part is what _you_ meant by the implication that I hold some kind of employed position. One that would demand the use of an office, no less!.

May I remind you that I am a virtual squib whose life has been _literally_ frozen for years and, therefore, there's no way on Earth that I can have actual duties of any kind?"

Potter's face was gray with something akin to horror. His green eyes had grown to such dangerous proportions that they were threatening to pop right out of their sockets. His mouth opened at least twice to speak, but failed miserably. Managing only to bless Severus' ears with the absolutely unhelpful summation of:

"You _don't_ know?... Oh, Shit!"

Now he was truly worried. His spine turned to stone and his throat dried to the consistency of dust, in heart-pounding expectation of some perfectly dreadful news.

The auror's wide palm dug anxious furrows all over the already messy thatch of dark curls that topped his head and a short kind of almost explosive silence descended between them.

"How could you not know?. I thought Professor Mcgonagal told you!"

He was even more distressed at the mention of Minnie. Dear Founders... What could possibly be so bad that they thought he'd only take it with equanimity if it came from her?.

"Told me what?"

"I wasn't trying to hide it, Severus!. She said that she was going to tell you and it didn't even occur to me that she hadn't, you see?. It just... It hasn't come up in conversation so far... and I assumed that you both must have agreed with my opinion that it's dangerous for you to return there, at least until your magic is fully restored. Edwardson seemed happy enough with that plan just last week!"

One word alone, among all the rest, made sudden sense to him. It was that name: one that he hadn't bothered to think about in a very long time, the one to spark all kinds of triggers within his head.

His black eyes widened with the most horrific foreboding as he formulated a single, sharp-toned question:

"Edwardson?. Did you just say Edwardson, Potter?. As in... Maximilian Lithmius Edwardson, the Head of Hogwarts Board of Governors?"

Potter's head shot jerkily up and down in a voiceless, soundless, utterly gob-smacking gesture of assent. He felt cold down to his toes and his gut knotted into a million tangled loops of icy dread.

"Why would Max even talk to you?. He must be two hundred by now already. He hardly leaves that house of his, unless it's to deal with important school-related matters"

Green eyes fixed him with a firm and soothing look.

"It's O.K. Severus, I promise!. There is no need for you to lose all color like that!. Minerva has everything under control, you see?. She's been keeping an eye on things all this time. There's no need for you to panic. I'm sure she'll be happy enough to continue holding the fort until you recover completely.

Now we only have to fire-call Malfoy and find out what the Hell he was thinking!. It isn't safe enough for you, in your current state, to return to a school that's filled to the brim with magical children. Anything could happen to you, for Godric's sake!. Anything at all.

There's no way that you could defend yourself from any misfired or botched spells, if they were to be accidentally directed your way during something as simple as a stroll through the corridors..."

He was becoming more and more distressed.

With every word that fell from the auror's lips an awful, truly terrible picture was slowly, but certainly, starting to emerge here. One that he could not fail to see, no matter how badly he desired to become utterly blind to it.

He decided to try his luck with the least ridiculous of all the possibilities that were fleeting wildly through his head:

"Are you implying that I am still a... Hogwarts Professor?. I thought Draco is teaching Potions now, isn't he?"

Emerald eyes focused on him once more and a small, but genuine smile appeared on the Gryffindor's mouth for a fleeting second.

"The Ferret's there, alright!. Got his Oh-So-Awesome-Potions-Mastery and high-tailed it back to the school in the blink of an eye. Told everyone that he wanted to be close to you and he'll leave for greener pastures the moment you blinked awake.

He's been there all along. Poking at you with this potion and that one. Getting his bloody father into the grounds, in order to discuss this book or that one. They must have read entire _libraries_, in their stubborn determination to bring you back. It was _impossible_ to visit your room without finding one or the other over there..."

A wide smile broke across his features then. His heart warmed with affection for his godchild and his best friend, they both had been one of his most inspired choices in life. He'd struck gold there, true gold, and there was nothing that delighted him more than hearing proof of it, even if it was voiced in so derisive a manner...

"They do know loyalty, don't they?. And determination. They are the best friends any man could have... Are they not, Mr. Potter?"

The young features twisted with some kind of deeply-set resentment.

"I hate it when you go all soft-eyed over those twitchy bastards, but I'll admit that they have gone above and beyond my every expectation on your behalf. That's why I can't understand what, in the bloody Hell, that man was thinking!.

This is not like him at all. I'd have bet my life on the certainty that he'd rather drink poison than _deliberately_ expose you to unnecessary danger. Least of all, when he _knows_ you to be weakened!"

Potter's sudden return to the initial issue brought back the awareness that he had not been given a satisfactory answer to this particular conundrum.

"If Draco is the Potion Master of Hogwarts... Then what is it that I am supposed to teach? Defense?"

The boy laughed so heartily upon hearing that suggestion that he felt truly insulted!. How dare that brat imply, with such unnecessary display of unbecoming mirth, that the very idea of him teaching that particular subject was nothing sort of hilarious?.

"I don't see what's so dammed funny, Mr. Potter!"

"Sorry. Sorry!. But it's just...I don't really know how to tell you this, you see?. Do you remember George Weasley?"

Abject horror seized him from head to toes. He froze with shock from the inside out, from the top of his dark head to the very tip of his oldest, most comfortable shoes.

" Weasley?. George Weasley?. What in the Holy name of Merlin's silky, green bloomers was Minerva thinking?. To hire that _menace_ for a subject such as that one it's... it's... it's absolutely _preposterous_!. Wait... Wait. The boy didn't even seat his N.E.W.T's..."

Potter had become sombre. Golden face lit with old, but still heartfelt sorrow.

"Yes. He did.

Fred... Fred was killed in the last battle, Severus. Didn't you know?... And George became... I don't know: _lost_, without his brother. It was touch and go there for a while.

He left the shop. Stopped all that teasing that he'd always done... I didn't hear him crack a single joke in something close to a year and, when he finally did, it was a weak and uninspired thing.

He went back to school then. He's turned himself into a different man altogether. He's become quite the expert in the field of defense now. Got his mastery and all. He is happy enough with the teaching, he is popular and he gets results. I even think that you'll like his odd approach, if you ever give his class a chance"

He sat there, like a mannequin, and stared dumbly at the youth before him. George Weasley... a _teacher._ He couldn't even imagine such a thing!.

"I heard about his brother. When they came to visit, I told both: Molly and Arthur, how truly saddened I felt about their loss, but it never occurred to me to ask them about the other twin. It just... skipped my mind... I can't believe I forgot all about him!"

Potter's dark head shook with rueful agreement as that bright gaze settled on him with genuine, unmistakable affection:

"You are trying to come to terms with four years of history in a very short span of time, Severus. It's no wonder that some things escape your notice. I bet it's disconcerting enough to drive you up the wall. You were always so precise with everything that you must feel constantly as if you've been plunged straight into chaos. I forget, sometimes, that you've truly lost all these years..."

There was something so very gentle in the boy's tone that it managed somehow to snare his senses altogether. Black eyes clashed with deep green and they both _connected_ with one another in that same kind of intimidating _mutual_ _understanding_ that had become more and more common between them as their friendship deepened...

He disliked the odd intimacy of the situation. The unpleasant sense of _familiarity_ that his mind had started to associate with moments such as this one, as they became more and more common an occurrence between the two of them.

He could not cope with the extremely discomfiting realization that he was responding to the child at an almost instinctual level, no less... The very thought brought cold sweat to his pale temple and he closed his own eyes, in order to break the moment.

Silence filled the room then. Potter waiting him out patiently, always patiently. Like a hunter who's settled upon a particular prey...

The predator waited and watched. Listened to him with the whole of his body. Focused with deadly intent on his selected victim, in order to better asses the optimum moment for the most efficient attack...

Severus kept quiet and still, attempting to ride out that disquieting sense of terror that had so suddenly seized him. He _knew_, with every fiber of himself, that he was truly overreacting. That it was his own irrational fear, about the inexplicable strength of their growing attachment, the one to put those unpleasant comparisons in his head.

He had no intention of retreating. No intention of... _listening_ to his own damaging misgivings with regards to this relationship that was forming between them. So he remained as he was for a long time: still like a statue with his eyes firmly closed against reality... blind to _everything,_ by his own choice, and silent. Utterly and irrevocably voiceless, lest he allowed himself the mistake of lashing out at the boy...

Tension rose. And rose. AND ROSE... within the room. His heartbeat pounded, against the rigid prison of his own ribcage, with the same furious force that a threatened stallion would use to pound the soil under its hooves. His breathing turned swallower and stilted. His head began to ache with the first initial signs of a thunderous headache.

Potter sighed loudly and then a foreign hand settled over his own arm, which had been resting on the polished surface of the table all along. The touch startled him and his eyes shot warily open. Ebony depths flashed dangerously, straight into the green eyes of the boy.

"I dislike it when you touch me for no reason, Potter!" His growl was a frosty reproof that demanded, without having to ever say the words, the immediate removal of those fingers from his person.

The auror, of course, turned to be utterly impervious to unvoiced commands.

"And I dislike it when you close me out, Severus!. We were having a conversation. Don't you remember? You say something, then I answer and we carry on from there back and forth... That's how it works with almost everybody else. You, on the other hand... _Why_ did you retreat just now?. I don't remember saying anything stupid!"

He tried to make sense of that last bizarre statement but, if it did indeed have any, it simply escaped him. His mouth opened to speak, but he found himself just too... _agitated..._ to offer any kind of reasonable response.

The moment stretched and their eyes clashed once more. That wide, too-warm palm burned the whole area around his wool-covered wrist, over which it was settled.

"You never said what my purpose is at Hogwarts" He finally decided on berating the auror briskly, shaking his limb free of that disconcertingly intimate touch with a jerky and irritated motion.

Potter's smile could have broken shards of glass, it was so jagged. So broken. It was a thing that could dissolve under the strain of a mere whisper, with the next sigh from those lips.

"What's left, Severus?. I'm sure it's not that difficult. There are Potions and Defense, both of them already filled. What's the other role that you ever played within that school?. The only one that would make a man like Edwardson come right out of his huge mansion in order to sort out?. You _know_ what it is, don't you?. You just don't _want_ to accept it!"

-He is not actually saying any of this. Is he?. I'm... I'm just having some kind of breakdown at the breakfast table and hallucinating the whole thing...- His thoughts grabbed onto that simple and _relieving_ explanation and refused to let go of it.

He stared straight at Potter and the auror just... stared right back at him.

There was so much _anticipation_ glowing with excited verdant intensity within the gaze that held his own that he couldn't have held onto his weak conviction of being a victim of some kind of bizarre _delusion_ for too long, anyway.

"You must be joking!" He spluttered finally, throat constricted with the horror of imagining it to be true: that he was, indeed, exactly were he'd left off. Condemned to inhabit Albus' office for all eternity. Sentenced to be reminded, every second of every day, of exactly _why_ it had been necessary for him to assume control in the first place.

Potter looked at him oddly. Green gaze dimmed and inky brows furrowed as the very last words Severus wanted to hear rent the air:

"You are the Headmaster of Hogwarts, Severus."

His brain tried so hard to wrap itself around that particularly unwelcome and inexplicable development that for a whole minute he simply... _gaped_!.

"What about Minerva?" He finally decided to tackle the most obvious weakness of the whole ridiculous concept.

Utter Gryffindor idiocy returned with a bang, and the boy blinked gormlessly at him:

"What about her?"

He was flustered enough to feel like screaming at the brainless menace to stop being so... obtuse!.

"She was Albus' deputy!. It has been understood, for a long time now, that she'd eventually succeed him.

I was _forced_ to accept the position on the Dark Lord's orders!. It was _not_ a choice that I ever made, nor one that had the approval of the Board of Governors, either. No one was given any power of veto at the time. I have no possible _right_ to claim a position that was never meant to be mine, in the first place. I can't believe Minnie would think I'd dare!"

Potter snorted and he found that single action disrespectful enough to grit his teeth:

"Mcgonagal herself told the Board how she'd accepted the position of Deputy Headmistress on the condition that, if it ever came to war, _YOU_: Severus Snape, would be revealed as Albus Dumbledore's choice for his successor.

She has a letter, you see?. Edwardson has one too. _Both_ of them are signed by the late Headmaster's own hand and state the whole deal that they all agreed to in crystal-clear detail: She'll take over under normal circumstances and appoint you as her natural successor...

You'll step up, if Voldermort ever managed to take things far enough for the Ministry to declare open conflict. She'll remain your deputy then and eventually follow you, if you came to be lost during the war or decided to retire before her death"

He was so stunned that he could not even _think_ of a response. He'd never heard of such letter, had never been made aware of either it's existence or the fact that there had even been _conditions_ to Minnie's appointment as Albus' second in command.

She'd never intimated anything of the like. And the Headmaster... Albus had never even asked him if he'd care to agree to that crazy plan, in the first place!.

"I... I didn't know any of that"

Potter seemed to be expecting that very confession, for he shook his wild mop frantically up and down.

"Yes, we know. It was Albus' idea that Voldermort should think himself really clever by installing one of his "_most_ _trusted_" at the helm.

Part of the reason why the old man was so adamant that you rise in the ranks, during that last year of his life, was his determination to set the stage for _your_ appointment as Headmaster. It all worked like clockwork, only... you were badly injured in the battle. For almost three whole weeks we actually thought that you were dead. Albus kept insisting that you couldn't be, though. That your portrait had not appeared on the wall..."

His whole body shuddered at the very idea. He disliked the whole concept of surrendering "His Adventure" to the utterly trying demands of the school. A former headmaster tied to a wall, forever embroiled in the day to day running of an institution to which he had already dedicated his whole life...

"The war is over now, though. I'm sure Minnie has been doing an excellent job of it. I see no reason why she wouldn't be delighted to take over, it won't take much more than a letter of resignation to Max."

Verdant eyes searched his face with a truly sombre expression:

"I'm telling you, Severus, we thought that you were dead!. We tried to instate Minerva as the new Headmistress, but the school wouldn't accept it. The whole office refused to open to her command.

Then Draco contacted Madam Pomfrey about you and the whole story of your survival became known. We tried to heal you, but... the venom was so resistant that it took us a long time and, when we finally had that disaster fixed, it turned out that you had no wish to wake up.

That was another bloody battle that seemed to be never-ending!. The school needed a proper head and we thought that you'd never make it... so we tried demoting you forcefully. The whole Board signed the documents. It still didn't work!.

Hogwarts itself has it in its head that you are in charge and so you are!. The only thing that was actually necessary was for you to be _physically_ within the grounds and that was never a problem because you stayed in your own private rooms, just off the infirmary"

He was thunderstruck with the most confusing mix of utter vexation and awed humbleness at the extent to which the school's own magic had gone to defended his unorthodox appointment.

"That's... That's incredible!"

The boy smiled at him. A soft and bright light had entered those eyes that watched him gently.

"Yes, it is. It is also one of the reasons why your magic is actually missing, you see?. When the vow was trying to assert itself against your own will, it attempted to... _wrestle._.. with you. Persuade you to accept it properly, I think.

But we were at Hogwarts, back to the room you'd been using while you were still trapped in your coma, and the castle... I think the castle believed that it's Headmaster was in danger. It _attempted_ to come to your rescue, Severus. I have never seen the like... Not ever!. There was so much magic coursing through your body that you started to seize. You were just... too weak to cope with all that power, so... I...

I don't really _know_ how I did it, or even what the Hell it was that I actually did, but... It stopped. All of it. It. Just... Stopped!..."

He was now frightened indeed. Utterly and most certainly terrified. This golden-featured and verdant-eyed young boy was actually confessing to his face, so very casually, that he'd gone toe to toe with the _combined_ power of both Hogwarts itself and a badly pissed off Wizard's Oath, and managed to subjugate them _both_ to his own will, without actually having a bloody clue as to how he'd done it...

The blasted idiot could have killed him. _KILLED_ _HIM!. _And he simply sat there, on the other side of this ridiculously long table, and did absolutely nothing but... blink stupidly!.

Cold was seeping down his spine, invading his every bone with the most absolute panic. He started to shiver uncontrollably and his eyes: ebony black and almost always devoid of any emotion, shone with the most abject fear that a human gaze can possibly display.

Potter shot off his chair like a bullet. Bright green gaze wide and frantic as he called his name loudly:

"Severus!... What...?. You've got to calm yourself down!. Calm yourself!"

He felt like laughing. So hard, so loudly and so... _bitterly_ that for a very long time he actually did not realize that he was doing it.

The boy's hands settled on his person: invasive, unwelcome, terrifyingly disrespectful digits that perched without his permission over his shoulders.

"Severus!"

He was shaken firmly. Violently. Rattled almost, like a toddler's toy...

He started to hiccup hysterically. A thin river of crystalline, warm tears began to run down his pale cheeks as he laughed and laughed... And. Laughed. AND LAUGHED!...

He could not possibly stop. He had no intention at all of stopping. He'd laugh himself into his grave and save this child the trouble...

The boy seemed to have turned into granite. He was suddenly cold-eyed and perfectly calm, as those first truly frantic seconds of initial panic gave way to whatever it was that turned James Potter's son into a truly impressive leader.

"Severus, listen to me!. You are having a panic attack. You've got to bring yourself under control or you'll upset the healing tissues of your throat, do you understand me?. I'm not letting you get into another respiratory arrest, no matter what!"

For some reason he found that notion funny. Arrest... yes!. Potter should definitely arrest him!. Wasn't he the bloody auror extraordinaire?.

Utter mirth exploded within him and his hiccuping became erratic. Harsher.

He could feel himself unraveling slowly. Repressed frustration, desolate confusion, shocked trepidation... all of it spilled forth, from somewhere deep inside him, and attempted to take hold of his weakened body.

Potter's expression was one of absolutely livid determination. He looked shattered and pale. A distressed, green-eyed rendition of perfect consternation. Those wide hands kept holding him so firmly that his shoulders burned with the contact. Yielded, with shameful submission, to the strength of the boy who clutched him...

"Severus... I'm warning you!. You won't like what I'll do if you force me to bring you back to your senses!. This is your very last chance: take a deep breath and _try_ to CALM YOURSELF DOWN!"

The command was like kindle to a fire that was already well past blazing. Severus felt himself almost dissolving into uncontrollable hilarity. He choked on his own guffaws and his chest started to ache with the effort of sustaining his amusement. Air itself became a problem. A problem that couldn't manage to stop his increasingly harsher chortles and he wondered, in ashamed horror, just how or when was he going to finally halt this terrible show of weakness...

"That's it!" Potter finally growled, so viciously, that he shivered with cold. With shock. With fear...

Those hands moved away from his shaking shoulders. They rose towards his rigid neck and cradled the pale, tear-stained skin of his cheekbones. Callused warm palms heated his clammy skin, while he laughed. And laughed. And laughed!...

Potter's eyes, so green and bright, looked heartbroken.

"This is not how I dreamed it happening, Severus... This is not how I wanted it at all..."

He had no time to ponder on those words before the most astonishingly strange thing happened: the boy pulled his face upwards. Held it carefully between those tanned wide palms and brushed their lips together.

It was so shocking an act that he stilled. Held immobile by sheer shock, deep bewilderment and the actual awareness that there were lips... _human_, _living_, _willing_ lips touching his own!.

He gasped, startled, and as his lips parted Potter's tongue pushed inside him, like a warm, wet, poignantly solicitous invader...

His first kiss. And it was just... as soft, as gentle, as utterly tender and loving as he could have possibly imagined...

It had also been given to him by a desperate man, who happened to have hated him for most of his life, as a last resort to bring him out of a shameful bout of hysteria. Something along the lines of a slap to the face or a firm, forceful shake...

Potter retreated after a few brief second. Lips slightly red and wet with a sheen of Severus' own tears that they'd collected during their short contact.

The boy swallowed and those green eyes looked straight into his own face with an expression that was, for once, unreadable.

Severus felt truly devastated as he saw the muscles of that young throat contract. Maybe in preparation to utter some sort of apology or, more probably, to swallow the bitter bile that must have risen to the back of the auror's throat at the very idea of having been forced to kiss his ghastly ex-Potions teacher.

All in all... he couldn't help the thought that he would have preferred the slap to the face. It would have hurt far less for sure. It would have kept his own lips still virgin, still untouched, still unaware of just how truly... _beautiful_... the gift of a kiss could be...

TBC...


	22. Chapter 22

_**THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 22**_

After that kiss life became truly difficult.

He'd remember the whole thing at the most strange of times: while sipping his tea. While brushing his teeth. While sitting, alone, in his bed. While attempting, _so_ _hard,_ not to stare dumbly at Potter...

He felt... _dazed_ and horrified in equal measure. He felt... _robbed_ of a part of himself that had always been his own, a part of himself that had now been... _invaded,_ besmirched. Utterly tainted by another's touch, another's presence...

The very worst of it all was that the other side of the equation refused to leave him alone. As the memory of the boy's unbelievingly stupid action refused to be pushed inside a box labeled "_disaster_" and remain there, untouched and utterly unremarked upon for all eternity, his mood fluctuated between abject despair and absolute, livid ire.

He understood that, for some bizarre reason known only to him, Potter had decided that pecking one's hysterical former professor smack on the lips was a better way to bring him out of a panic-attack than to simply... slap the Hell out of him until sense returned to his mind.

He understood that Potter had been trying to help him, in his own inimitable way, of course, but... he could not accept the idea that it had actually happened. Could not... _conform._.. himself to it. Not in any shape or form.

He wanted desperately to forget the whole shameful... _debacle._ But the incident seemed to be disconcertingly lodged in his mind with a firmness that just... _drove him to distraction!_. His desperately depraved consciousness seemed _determined_ to revisit those few seconds AD-NAUSEUM!. So much so, that his every attempt to forget the whole blasted ordeal simply... _backfired._

There was so much tension between them now that even their former animosity would have been preferable to the awfully polite dancing around one another that had marked their most recent interactions. He was honest enough to recognize that the situation was mostly his fault, but... he could not bring himself to face the boy now. Not at all. Not for any reason...

He started to use every excuse that he could think of to abandon the awful tension-filled flat.

Long walks became an almost visceral obsession and he spent so many hours sequestered within the comfortable coziness of Mr. Crowley's bookshop that the old man started to prepare two cups of tea, instead of one. Minutely adjusting his own morning routine in expectation of Severus' own arrival.

He found the soothing atmosphere of the small shop calming, it appeased his agitated senses and allowed him the respite of concentrating on something that he loved.

The printed word allowed him to escape into worlds where he could live life through the reassuring distance of a firmly dividing glass. He didn't have to feel _anything._ He didn't have to deal with the confusing mix of... shamed sentiment and paralyzing terror that he associated with real-life interactions...

The more often he disappeared, though, the fouler Potter's mood became.

More than once the auror had attempted to strike up a conversation regarding the topic of his outings, but he was never encouraged in his questions. Never truly offered an answer. Never allowed to return to their former, and dearly-missed, closeness.

There had been no more... cooking together. No more watching films together at the end of their day. No more walks through the park. No more dinners outside. No more popcorn...

Severus would sit stiffly in his chair and remain stoically silent as the boy _insisted_ on going through the motions of preparing his breakfast every morning. The same ghastly scene would replay day after day: Potter huffed, shook his awfully messy head and stammered awkwardly while Severus watched and despaired for their irreparably damaged friendship in a frosty, unwelcoming silence that he didn't know how to break.

Finally the boy would ask him what his plans were, in a slightly indignant tone, and he'd try to force himself to... _unbend..._ at least a little. But he could never manage to do such a thing in the end.

He was too _ashamed _of himself, too... _unsure_ of the proper protocol of conduct to be followed in situations such as this one. How do you look the man who's kissed you out of pity in the eye?. How do you _attempt_ to remain _friends_ with the one person in all the world who's ever _bothered_ to... _touch_ you in a _sexual_ kind of way?.

He had no clue as to what the answers to these questions might be. Had no idea as to whom should he ask for some kind of... _insight,_ or even _if_ he wanted to talk to anyone about any of it!. He didn't _want_ to have to deal with any such thing and he knew that Potter... Potter would eventually force him to do exactly that. The mere thought of it was enough to make him break out into a cold sweat and he'd freeze, like a deer caught in the lights of sudden Lumos, before retreating hastily. Frostily. Cowardly...

"I'm going out" He'd inform the child invariably and it was obvious that the answer bothered Potter beyond reason. The youth would grit his teeth and proceed to bang his coffee-making machine around the worktop, like a monkey trapped inside a cage. Green eyes afire with absolutely murderous anger. Jawline so rigid that Severus wondered how it was possible that he hadn't chipped off a tooth already.

After a while Potter's response started to change. He took a very deep breath and dared to _suggest_ that they go out _together._ As if they could!. As if nothing, absolutely _nothing_ untoward had happened between them. As if it were _possible_ for the two of them to... _ignore _altogether the fact that they had _kissed_ and return to their strained friendship once again.

The gryffindor had come up with the most bizarre schemes to Severus' unchanged, three-word statement and so it was that he started being subjected to a very obviously faked surprised intake of breath, quickly followed by one astonishingly idiotic suggestion after another:

"Really?. I've got to go do some shopping, maybe we should go together?. We are running out of lettuce, Severus"

In the space of three days the boy had needed to go shopping. To the bank. To the book-shop, the post office... and last, but utterly bizarrely, to the dentist!...

Every increasingly weirder invitation to join Potter in all of that... _strange fun _that the boy was so insistently demanding that they share was frostily rejected, and the more that situation went on, the more tension that accumulated between the two of them.

It felt, to Severus' own senses, as if they were suspended together over a slowly building fire: rotating endlessly around it, like boars tied to a grilling pole. Helplessly becoming more and more scorched by the merciless power of those increasingly dangerous flames, until there was no doubt in his mind that the situation could not possibly continue for much longer. One or the other would have to break soon, before they _both_ burned to a crisp together...

Every evening he'd return to his beige prison fearing that _this_ would be the night when the situation finally came to a head.

The child always waited for him, _always!._ He'd be perched under the archway that lead straight into the main living-room, as if afraid that he'd miss Severus' return if he so much as got comfortable in one room or another. Those green eyes drilled into his own, flashing with a kind of betrayed hurt that was never voiced and that young and stubborn jawline ended up invariably locked into a fairly expressive rendition of vexed affront.

Although he'd been waiting for it to happen, there had been no attempt to _attack_ him via Legilimency. No more scenes of ridiculously overprotective idiocy. No word spoken, aloud at least, to imply that he was _incapable _of looking after himself.

Potter seemed now convinced that he was safe enough navigating the muggle world all by himself. But that didn't stop the boy waiting every night for his return, no matter how late Severus arrived or how many times he told the auror, in a frosty and strained voice, that there was no reason to worry that he'd vanish!.

He had sworn, on Draco's life no less, to remain under the auror's roof no matter what else happened. In all honesty, he'd been expecting the boy to take his rather obvious cue and release him from the constrains of their vow... but Potter, blind as he was to the delicate nuances of true subtlety, had failed to do so...

As one day merged slowly into the next and the boy's attempts to engage him became less and less subtle he grew weary of going back. He started to stretch the return journey to the point where he almost crawled through the streets.

Luc had come bearing gifts, in the shape of his own money already handily converted to muggle currency and more clothes, too... The robes had been magically adapted to his new, emaciated figure, so that they no longer fell off him in swathe upon swathe of heavy black wool.

They also had been magically treated with some charm that allowed the muggles to see nothing out of the ordinary about them. Apparently it showed him to be wearing a very elegant business suit of some kind, the same brand that Luc himself liked to wear whenever he was forced to attend to the muggle side of his vast financial empire...

Due to the quality of the clothing that he was supposedly wearing, he found himself being warmly welcomed into any establishment that he chose to enter. If he decided to idle the whole afternoon away at a coffee shop, ordering cup of tea after cup of tea, the waiters simply nodded with a smile and left him mostly alone. This was how he spent entire days now. To the point that he became a connoisseur of every coffee house or tea-room to be had within a five mile radius of the flat.

One Thursday evening, almost two whole weeks since that blasted kiss, he returned to his cage later than ever. He'd spoken to Luc earlier in the day and had been slyly informed that he was expected to be returning to the school by next Friday, no matter how many Howlers Potter decided to send threatening to sue the lot of them.

He was smiling with relief. Thinking about the fact that, if Lucius remained firm... then he'd have seriously valid reasons to absent himself from the flat daily. He needed to survive the coming week first, though...

Then they'd be forced to find some sort of solution that would allow him to resume his duties as Headmaster without upsetting the letter of the vow that he'd been so very cleverly tricked into swearing.

He used his key and entered the flat, frowning slightly when it became immediately apparent that Potter was not lurking under the archway.

He stilled for a second, wondering if it was possible that the boy had finally given up on him and _left_...

His heart clenched at the prospect and a truly unexpected amount of... _grief..._ made him feel breathless with wounded betrayal. He could not believe how... _hurt..._ he felt by the mere idea of it. How was it possible for Potter's regard to have become so _important_ to him in so brief a span of time?...

Voices floated towards him then. Loud, agitated voices and he was pathetically relieved to realize that he'd been wrong. Potter hadn't abandoned him yet, there were visitors in the house. Angry, frustrated visitors that seemed to be screaming at the auror.

He frowned. Unsettled once again by how _strongly_ he desired to go in there and defend the gryffindor from whoever it was that had decided to come into the man's own home and... _abuse_ him.

A few steps down the corridor brought him close enough to finally distinguish what was being said.

He recognized Draco's voice almost immediately and was instinctively troubled by the fact they were together. He froze from head to toe, wondering if he should rush in and attempt to save his precious godchild from saying something truly awful to his stranded... _friend. _

"I don't want to get into that discussion with you, if you've got a problem with something that my father's done, then you must address it with him. I've come to see my Godfather. I can't believe that he is not here!. What have you done to him, Potter?.

How is it possible that I haven't managed to find him at home all week?. I want to know what you've done to upset him this much, he shouldn't be running around town so soon after leaving St Mungo's. This can't be good for him, Harry!"

"I _told_ you this already!. I've told your bloody father, too. And your mother. And Minerva... Gosh!. You guys have got to give me a break. OK?...

He's been running all around the city since he found out that he's still the Headmaster of Hogwarts. He didn't take the news too well, Draco. I hadn't realized that he didn't know anything about it and I kind of dropped the news on him without much warning"

"That's not reason enough, Potter!. Severus is the most rational man I know, he wouldn't put his own health in jeopardy for something as ridiculous as that. Not to this level of... _irresponsibility._

He is still physically weak. He has no magic. He is still taking potions round the clock...

Are you really trying to convince me that the man who berated me constantly while I was growing up, for playing Quidditch with a headache, has decided to abandon the habits of a lifetime and become some kind of... _reckless__ wanderer_ for no good reason whatsoever?. How stupid do you think I am?"

Listening to the ever-increasing animosity being displayed in there Severus wondered if he should go inside and separate them, send each one to a different corner of Potter's lounge before they came to blows on his behalf...

He'd already taken a couple of steps forwards when the gryffindor's response reached his ears and he decided to wait things out, at least for the moment. Leave the two of them to their discussion and see how far they'll take it.

Maybe, he'd even learn something that could finally explain the astonishingly _civil_ relationship that seemed to have developed between the two...

"He became hysterical when I told him about Hogwarts, all right?. I had to force him out of it. Severus' reaction to _that_ was a tad... _extreme_.

You know the man, Draco!. He got mad and hasn't bothered to speak to me ever since. He's decided that running away is the way to deal with it and I just... I don't _know_ what to do!. I can't seem to reach him, he's closed off completely!"

"You _slapped_ him?" Draco's growl was clearly incensed. His tone had turned into a frosty hiss of fury from one syllable to the next. "How could you do such a thing, Harry?. No matter how upset he was he'd have eventually brought himself under control. There was no need for you to... _intervene_. If you dared to slap him, then it's a bloody _miracle_ that he let you live... There's no one more proud than my Godfather. He's never going to forgive you for this. _Never_!. I can't believe you were _that_ _stupid_!"

"I'm willing to apologize, for Godric's sake!. I've been wanting to have this out with him since it happened, but he is impossible to pin down!.

I let things slide for a few days. Tried to wait him out and see if he'd settle, but...

He's been coming home later and later every night. He's spending every hour of the day going from shop to shop, drinking tea...

He hardly eats any dinner, whenever he makes it back here on time and he hasn't _bothered_ to snarl five words at me in more than a week!. I'm going right out of my mind with worry for that man and he just... _DOESN'T_ _SEEM_ _TO_ _CARE!._

I've tried to make him see sense, but he wouldn't even listen!. He's refusing to go to you or your father. He's shot me down every time I've tried to suggest that it'd be better if I accompany him on his outings. I didn't know what he was doing, so I... I started to follow him..."

There was a short silence that Severus couldn't really interpret. Lacking any access to the youths meant that he could not gauge their reactions to each other by the expression on their faces, but he could imagine without much effort how his godchild's expressive gray eyes would be shooting lethally poisonous daggers at the gryffindor right about now.

He felt like going in there and wringing the brat's neck himself. He could not believe the audacity of the bastard!. How dare he spy on Severus' own activities, as if he had any right?. The mere idea was enough to make his jaw grit and his hands curl into a pair of incensed white-knuckled fists.

"You've _followed_ him?. After he's made it perfectly clear... for _days..._ that he doesn't _want_ to see you? Are you daft, Potter?.

When a sick but proud man, such as Severus, _abandons_ all _safety_ in order to _avoid_ you... for hours on end, no less, you don't go riling him up!.

He needs some time. He needs some space to deal with the present as it is. Have you forgotten that he used to hate you _viscerally?._ He's just returned from a coma, the war has barely ended in his mind!. We are still school children to him. His last memories of us have us both at _seventeen_, for Merlin's sake!"

"I _know_ that!. _I._ _KNOW._ _THAT,_ Draco!..." Potter's shout carried so much frustration, so much despairing anger, that the emotion seemed to take form and breathe itself into sudden, pain-filled life in the small and stunned silence that followed.

"Then you are even more of an idiot than I thought you were!" Draco's assessment was as coldly voiced as it was merciless. "You are _pushing_ him too _much, t_oo _fast, t_oo _strongly_... You've got to let him breathe a bit!. Can't you understand that he'll only resent you, if you continue trying to force him to see you in a new light before he is ready?...

You don't know how fragile he can be, Harry!. I've never seen him so low before, He is _Breaking. Apart._ _At._ _The._ _Seams_...

Don't you _see_ that you've taken over at the worst possible time?. He is confused and afraid and he needs to feel safe, only... he can't, because you've gone ahead and removed his every clutch out of the equation...

He doesn't trust you, so he is on his guard every second of every day instead of relaxing. How is that going to allow him to heal properly?.

He needs _me._ And my father. And Mcgonagal. He needs to come _home, _you've got to see that..."

"He is not ready!. His magic hasn't returned. There's no way that he can be safe at Hogwarts, not until he can properly defend himself from everything that can go wrong. I told _that_ to your father.

I'm not keeping him a prisoner, for Godric's sake!. You can visit him whenever you like, it's not as if I could stop any of you, even if I wanted to.

I need you to tell Lucius to back off, this thing that he's convinced the Board to do can really harm Severus!. He should be allowed time to recover, there's no need to force his return quite this soon. Not when Minerva is ready to cover for as long as it takes..."

There was some sort of cutlery being banged around, almost as if they both were attempting to go through the motions of polite beverage-sharing. A spoon clinked rather forcefully against thick porcelain and then Draco's voice returned to the fray, colder than ever...

"I won't help you persuade Father to halt Severus' return. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that you two need to part ways. Right now, Potter!.

My Godfather needs the familiarity that the castle can provide him with. He needs the comfort of having all of us at hand. He needs the reassurance of seeing with his own eyes the changes that have happened in his absence. He needs some distance from whatever the Hell it is that has been happening here..."

"And if he gets hurt again?. What do we do then, Draco?. Who do we blame?... Do we keep visiting him at the hospital, every two weeks, just because we are all so busy tugging on him, like sort of human trophy, that we _can't_ look out for his best interests?"

"You are a fine one to talk!. He broke his arm and _lost _his _magic_... because of you!. Don't go climbing on your gryffindor high horse now. Not in front of me, at least!. There'll be someone always with him there. We were talking the logistics of it, just last Monday.

A special meeting of the board was held after you sent along that ridiculously lengthy list of yours. Father is trying to accommodate your demands for his safety to the best of our abilities, Harry. But you must remember that you have no actual grounds for requesting any of them.

Severus is nothing of yours. Nothing!. He is _mine_ if he is anyone's. I am his godson. I worry as much as you do about him, probably more... and I'm telling you that trying to tangle Father in a legal tug-of-war over Severus' return won't help anyone!"

"Why is Lucius so adamant about this?. I can't get it into his head that he is making a mistake. It'll be a _disaster_, Draco!. Why can't any of you see that?. Give me a reason for this, one single reason that actually makes sense..."

The legs of a chair scrapped across the floor as one boy or the other stood up impatiently. The jarring sound of agitated footsteps filled the small, tense silence and when his godson's answer finally reached his ears it sounded like a shockingly ferocious growl of vexed impatience:

"I've been doing that very thing for the last half hour, Potter!. But you are too thick to listen to someone who is trying to help you. Just because I'm telling you something that you don't want to hear doesn't mean you get to _dismiss _what I'm saying!.

Severus needs familiar people and places. He needs _privacy._ He needs _time._ He needs a _respite_ from you, before you end up _suffocating_ him to death... Do you think you'll get it now or should I be even more blunt?"

A shocked kind of vacuum followed. There was no noise of any kind. No sound at all. Cutlery, footsteps and even breathing seemed to have come to a sudden halt on the other side of the wall.

"What would you do if you were me, Malfoy?. If you _knew_ without a shadow of doubt that you are trying too hard, but felt too insecure to relax?. How would you _feel_ if you worried yourself sick about the health of a man who just... can't _see_ how weak he truly is?. Who doesn't eat enough, doesn't sleep enough, doesn't _trust_ _you_ enough to... _lean_ on you?"

"I'd be heartbroken, Harry... But I'll also understand that I need to retreat and think about all of it again, maybe change my whole strategy...

I'm not telling you to give him up. I'm only telling you to remember who you are dealing with here. You've got to thread far more carefully than this because you are hurting my Godfather and you are not even realizing it. You can't deal with Severus like a _gryffindor_. He is a slytherin, for Merlin's sake!. He needs... patience, subtlety, understanding...

He won't respond well to your let's-bash-every-problem-into-submission kind of approach. He'll want to ruminate things over. Turn them around in his head. Analyze them, in peace, before he is even ready to move on..."

"So you think I should let him go?"

Draco's response must have been non-verbal, but strong enough to convey the same kind of firmness of his earlier words, because there was a disconcerting little noise that sounded uncannily close to a loud sniffle. Then the auror's chocked voice rent the air once again:

"What if he goes back to hate my guts?. What if I send him back to Hogwarts only to find out that he's planning to _barricade_ himself in there until all... _this..._ goes away?.

He'll be home, Draco. He'll have no reason to deal with me if he doesn't want to... and we both know just how stubborn that bloody man can be!"

"Then you keep trying, Harry. That's the only thing you can do. It's the only think that'll work in the end, too. He won't be able to _barricade_ himself, as you so charmingly put it, unless you allow him to do so.

You need to give him space, not give up on him altogether. Things were going well between you two, weren't they?. They'll return there eventually, but you've got to be patient, for Salazar's sake!.

He'll have to _test_ you before he can _trust_ you, you _know_ that!. But it'll have to be on _his_ terms. In his own time. You'll get nothing but resentment if you rush this. Worse than that: you might actually lose him and If you do, he'll be out of your reach _forever_..."

TBC...


	23. Chapter 23

_**THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 23**_

Now that he knew that Potter had actually dared to follow him he was constantly on edge, constantly unnerved. Constantly wavering between the irrational _desire_ to be the whole focus of the auror's green-eyed scrutiny and the terrifying _need_ to be as far away from the man's anxiety-inducing attention as he possibly could.

He was driving himself crazy with his own constantly shifting desires and, therefore, became even more determined to avoid Potter altogether, at least until the week was finally over and he could put the whole of England between them by the simple action of returning to Hogwarts...

He'd gone as far as abandoning the flat before the first rays of sunlight had managed to so much as peek over the horizon, thus avoiding the harrowing ordeal of breakfast with the auror for three days in a row.

The situation at home became even more fraught.

Every night he arrived later and later, in the hopes of forcing the gryffindor to concede defeat by retiring to bed before his return, and every time he found himself being both, bizarrely disappointed and irrationally elated in equal measure, when he finally turned his key and found the boy under the archway. Silently waiting for his return with a thunderous scowl that seemed to be becoming darker, harsher, more and more outraged as the days wore on...

It was while he was quietly seating at a coffee shop that he finally felt it: that awful, prickly feeling that one gets on the skin at the back of the neck when someone is watching you intently...

He attempted to ignore the sensation at first, certain that he must have either imagined it or that the person watching him had mistaken him for someone else. But the feeling remained until it actually managed to convince him of the fact that this was_ it,_ he'd finally driven the boy to take some sort of action.

He was not certain what that action would be, though, and this bothered him even as it forced his blood to pound with a sickening anxiety, with that same kind of agitation that usually comes with its own supply of wildly fluttering butterflies being released within one's stomach and the cold knife of breathless, terrified nervousness swiftly messing with one's mind.

He failed miserably to pinpoint Potter's location when he attempted it. He could find no one looking at him oddly, or in any other way, for that matter. Regardless of how many times he searched the room for the origin of the horribly unsettling sensation, he came back to the same conclusion: there was no one here that he either recognized or seemed remotely likely to have recognized _him._

He decided to abandon the place and strolled through the streets aimlessly, but the awful prickle of awareness persisted in informing him that he was being followed very closely.

He had not survived twenty years of straddling _both_ sides of a lethal conflict by ignoring his own instincts when they told him, in no uncertain terms, that his surroundings were _not_ as peaceful as they _looked._

He was reasonably certain that it had to be the boy, but he could not really understand _why_ the gryffindor would even bother with something as ridiculous as following him again. Not when they both _knew_ that Severus would be _forced_ to return to their flat in order to comply with the letter of their oath.

Surely, certainly, Potter must have some kind of personal life to attend to. The man was on vacation, for Merlin's sake!. He should be out, enjoying his free time and engaging in... whatever the heck it was that young men felt like engaging themselves in, these days...

There was no reason that Severus could see, no _sane_ reason, at least, that could possibly _explain_ the little menace's newest intrusion into his privacy. He'd confessed to Draco that he already knew what Severus had been doing with his time, therefore _this_ could not really be about finding out that information. The boy had followed him before and he hadn't even noticed it. That was _not_ the case today, though. He was being very blatantly and almost _carelessly_ tracked, he was being... _dared_ to _sense_ the presence that was shadowing him. It was obvious to him that Potter's eventual goal was confrontation.

The auror could not have failed to figure out Severus' intense _dislike_ of foreign scrutiny. He tended to react very badly indeed when others _tried_ to _intrude_ into his life...

They both had fought in the same war. They had circled one another with enough viciousness to have accurate knowledge of each other's quirks and talents. The Gryffindor had to _know_ that Severus would detect him in the end... he was probably counting on it, the _bastard_, or he would have tried _much_ _harder_ to avoid discovery while in pursuit of a target who had been a _spy_ for more than twenty years.

Confrontation of any kind with the little brat was definitely _not_ on Severus' own agenda.

He decided then to follow the road down to it's very end, where it crossed with three others to form a hellish and very crowded intersection. There was a park near there and he was certain that he could loose his unwelcome companion in the bustle of the busy road. He'd turn around the first block and then cut across the grassy field, back towards his current position. He could take the whole exercise even further and go down towards the Thames, spend the remainder of the day walking idly by the river, maybe even pay a visit to the old Tower...

Potter sensed his intentions, though. After a while it became quite obvious that he was being very cleverly herded. It was clear in how he was suddenly jostled by a perfect stranger. Forced, by the man's frighteningly bulky frame, to ignore the fact that he'd been about to turn into the same alleyway from which he'd just been so very forcibly pushed away. It was there when a whole lorry's load simply... _tipped_ over, making it completely impossible for him to cross the road as had been his intention.

It was also obvious in how very suddenly the muggle traffic started to... _misbehave_ all around him. He could sense the presence of magic behind the fact that some cars began to speed wildly past, while others slowed down so much that they brought every other vehicle to a stand still... Cyclists got into the fray, weaving in and out of lanes. Swerving everywhere with dangerous, almost murderous recklessness...

It was there when five burly men decided to stand shoulder to shoulder at the mouth of a street, for no apparent reason that he could see, blocking his access to it completely unless he decided to confront them...

The more hemmed in that he became the more frustration that rose to boiling point within his chest. He was not stupid!. He could _tell_ that the boy was _trying_ to drive him into a rage and he knew, just _knew_, that giving into his own temper was exactly what the auror wanted, but... By Salazar!, he was actually mad enough to chew iron bolts!.

Desperation made him finally halt, bang in the middle of a very busy pavement. He could _see_ the child's intended destination from where he stood. It had to be that!. There was nothing else appropriate within sight. It was some kind of field, an abandoned little patch of uncared-for yellowish grass and rotting benches...

There was not a soul inside it and the people that surrounded the place simply... walked through it, as if they couldn't _see_ _it._ It became clear to him that the whole place was warded, invisible to muggles altogether... An apparition point, then. One that had been placed right in the middle of London.

He took a deep, steadying breath and searched the street up and down, attempting to pinpoint the little menace. People surged all around him like some kind of utterly intrusive human wave. He disliked the way in which he was being constantly jostled by the crowd that surrounded him. But refused, at least for the moment, to be moved from his position by anything other than his own will.

Potter was, of course, nowhere to be seen and a flash of utter annoyance raced through his mind when the memory of the brat's godforsaken cloak came back to haunt him.

_Invisible._.. The child was invisible to him!. That was an advantage that would allow his opponent to take the strongest position in this petty little skirmish of theirs...

He started to panic then. There was nothing at all that he could _do_ to avoid the brat. He was out in the open, being _literally_ herded and there was not a single _defense_ that he could use to impose himself. Potter had the magic, the cloak and the immunity to openly curse anyone he felt like cursing while in the presence of muggles, it was a prerogative that his position as an auror gave him...

Severus knew that he was doomed to... _surrender_... There was nothing _else_ that he could do. He had to give up his idea of escaping and accept his fate with grace. The brat had wanted to have this unwelcome conversation from the moment that kiss happened.

He _knew_ that his own negative reaction to the mere _possibility_ of having this discussion was the only reason why the auror had decided to wait this long.

He'd stormed out of the kitchen that day, leaving the room altogether before the brat had had the chance to start uttering an apology. Or an explanation. Or whatever the Hell it was that he'd been preparing to utter...

Their every interaction since had been limited by both his own conscious removal of himself from the house and the chilly, curt indifference with which he'd begun to treat the child.

He'd been worse than merely _forbidding,_ he'd been positively _aloof. _He hadn't wanted to face the bloody auror and endure any sort of verbal proclamation of... _regret_. That particular experience would have been so _humiliating_ that he couldn't bring himself to even _think_ about it.

For a while he'd actually convinced himself that the boy would respect his obvious desire to avoid having a bloody _dissertation_ on the whole ghastly event. He'd been actually relieved to have been granted the reprieve without having to _force_ the child into submission...

Now, though, it looked as if he'd run out of time. Or patience. Or maybe it was _luck_ that he finally had run out of...

The auror seemed determined to... _vent _and Severus would have no other option but to... _listen._

Cold sweat beaded on his temple as the kiss flashed across the landscape of his mind. He knew that it was pathetic but... there was no way on Earth that he wanted to have this one conversation. Not with Potter, of all people!. Certainly not with anybody else, for that matter.

Panic forced him to move as he was more brutally jostled than ever before and he realized with a flare of anger that the brat was behind it, somehow.

Patience seemed to have run out of the child altogether and Severus knew that, for the gryffindor to have used so much magic, so much _force_ in order to herd him here... there was nothing but frustration behind this!.

Potter was a _dangerous_ being when he was angry. He was too _powerful_ by far, too _emotional._ He could be _explosively_ _difficult_ to handle even when given the best set of circumstances and Severus' own _reticence_ to have this particular fight seemed to have served as the spark that had finally _ignited_ an already volatile situation.

His feet followed directions as he allowed them to drag him to that field... but with every step his mind was reeling. Praying. He was attempting to analyze his whole surroundings, refusing to give up in his instinctive need to avoid their imminent clash.

By the time he'd crossed the thick layer of wards that protected the little patch of grass he was trembling like a leaf. He was pale-faced and wide-eyed. He was utterly distressed...

He couldn't tell how long he just... _stood_ there. Waiting for the bastard to decide that he'd allowed him to cool off for long enough. He _knew_ that the wait was a very effective intimidation tactic, one that all aurors were particularly fond of. He'd been a _victim_ of it plenty of times, but... it had never quite affected him like _this._

He'd always been able to scorn at the whole tactic, laugh in the face of whomever dared to try it on him and remain stoically unreachable. Unbroken. Untouched...

He was none of those things now. He was very definitely affected by this whole debacle. By the kiss in the first place. By his own inability to forget it, or deal with it, or even have the whole god-dammed incident firmly erased from his mind like so much garbage...

"Oh, no. You _won't!..._ I'll force it right back in, if you so much as dare to remove the damn memory, Severus Snape!"

He jumped, in startled reaction to that darkly menacing growl, as the auror seemed to materialize right in front of him from out of nowhere.

It took him merely a blink to realize that, in his distress, he'd been _projecting_ his own thoughts loudly enough for the boy to be able to pick them up with truly insulting ease. He felt ashamed. Furious with himself and with Potter. With the whole awful situation...

"I'll do with my own memories whatever the Hell I want, Potter!" He fairly screamed his rage right into that rigidly determined face and he trembled when he saw those green eyes narrow intently.

"These are _my_ _memories,_ too!. My life... This is something that affects the _both_ of us and I'll be dammed before I let you _mess_ with it!. Or are you going to tell me that you'll remove it from your mind but leave mine untouched?. That'd be bloody pointless, anyway...

I don't think you'd let it go. At least _not_ knowing, as you do, that there's only one witness in the world to the whole thing and you have virtually unchallenged access to him!"

He was not stupid enough to admit to that. Not in front of an auror. Not in front of a potential obliviation victim. And definitely not in front of a Potter as incensed as he was right at this second.

"Maybe I'd content myself with the certainty that you'd never be crass enough to bring the matter up into casual conversation. It's best forgotten anyway"

Those green eyes turned Arctic with anger and there was so much resentment flashing emerald fire within the depths of that ever-darkening gaze that Severus felt like flinching away.

Cutting, frosty laugher rent the air only a second before the words themselves did:

"Newsflash, Professor, we are actually having _this_ _conversation._ Right _now,_ in fact. Seems to me that I'll continue to be the most awful disappointment to you, won't I?. I am actually _crass_ _enough!_"

He was so shocked by the savage tone that tainted every single gritted syllable of that response that his brain froze. He was not aware of it but he paled even further. His whole frame became rigid in the blink of an eye with the instinctive, urgent need to be prepared to defend himself from this... _this._.. absolutely _livid_ rendition of the child he'd once taught.

"I do not _wish_ to have this conversation!"

Potter's snort was, astonishingly, sarcastic enough to rattle him.

"Of course you don't!. Godric forbid that you ever _act_ like a normal human being and _talk_ out your problems!"

He was so incensed with the absolute _rudeness_ of the little jerk that he totally ignored the dangerous glint that had appeared on that emerald colored gaze:

"I do _not_ have a _problem_!. I'm not the one who's running behind a former professor of mine in some kind of stalker-like _binge,_ just for the kick of it, Potter!.

I am _attempting_ to _regain_ some modicum of _life,_ after having spent the last four years of it locked in a coma. I'd be grateful if you could manage to conveniently _disappear _from my otherwise perfectly fine evening, so that I might continue to _enjoy_ _it _in peace"

The gryffindor laughed in his face. The bitterly furious sound was so loud and jarring that it made the small hairs at the back of his neck stand on end.

"Gosh, Severus!. You are so far _removed_ from your own _emotions_ that you don't even _see_ how they drive your behavior. You are _not_ _trying_ to build back your _life,_ your life is already _built_ and _waiting_ for you to join it. Your job is waiting, your sickeningly annoying little family of Malfoys are about ready to explode with impatience for you to go join them in some kind of creepy, all-Slytherin bliss!.

Your rightful place in wizarding society is also ready to be filled, everyone is waiting for you to just... _take it, f_or Merlin's sake!... And what do _you_ _do? _Do you venture into Diagon Alley? NO!.

Do you go all the way to Hogwarts and visit the staff there? Of course not!, Godric forbid that you _bother_ with such niceties as visiting Minerva or even your _precious_ _Draco._ Never mind going to the trouble of calling on your dear friend: Lucious-Bloody-Malfoy...

You wouldn't go to see your old house or even Grimmauld place and Hogsmeade... that old village wasn't even on your radar, never mind the fact that you've lived next to it for twenty years and actually know at least ninety per cent of it's inhabitants...

I can think of at least twenty places that you could have decided to visit. But no. Oh, no!. None of that called for _your_ _attention, _none of them _intrigued_ you enough to bother with them.

You've spent every second of every day away from home for three whole weeks!. You've been _HIDING _in muggle London, no less!. Willing away the hours in one little tea-shop after another..."

He was livid with rage. Every cell in his rigid body resented those _foul_ and _unfounded_ accusations with a visceral kind of rancor. He was offended beyond all restrain. Pushed, by the boy's atrociously unfair judgment, into the kind of savage fury that so often had been directed during his teenage years at this creature's foul father.

"You've got _no_ _right_ to decide what should or shouldn't be appropriate enough to _"call for my attention,"_ as you so charmingly put it, Auror Potter!. My life is still my own, no matter how much you might wish for the contrary. What's more _my_ motivations are none of your business and, even if they were, you've just proved to me how much of a _moron_ you've remained despite having enjoyed the _full_ benefit of the last four years. I. HAVE. NO. MAGIC, POTTER!.

How the Hell do you _suggest_ that I travel to Hogwarts? Or to Wiltshire? How could I have _seen_ through the Fidelius Charm that protects _both_ Grimmauld place and Spinner's End?"

Potter blinked at him like the idiot that he was and the sheer rage that had been twisting those young features into a mask of truly frightening virulence diminished visibly. A frown furrowed the gryffindor's brow and his index finger rose to push those spectacles of his up the bridge of his nose with an exasperated and jerky motion.

"You _saw_ this field. You entered it without a glitch!"

He felt a _massive_ headache coming on. How on Earth had the founders decided to give so much power to this whelp?. It was so... _unfair_... that he felt like howling to the Heavens in outrage!.

"This place is just a pitiful patch of dying weeds. It has been warded against _muggles_ so that they'd ignore the presence of the wizards who _use_ _it_ as a point of apparition, but it hasn't been protected in any shape or form against those of us with enough _knowledge_ of the wizarding world to sense its presence. Any squib would see this place...

A Fidelius Charm is a completely different kettle of fish, Mr. Potter!. It is designed to fool _wizards_ and _witches_ who are in full possession of all their senses to the level that only those _allowed_ to do so should be able to see the hidden object or property!"

"Fine!" The brat huffed with indignant resentment and the small silence that fell between them allowed him to think for the first time without the all-pervasive cloud of sheer anger that had driven them to scream at one another, like two fishwives at the harbor...

Things would not end up so badly if he left now, he could see that the child had become distracted from his initial belligerent intent by the path that their conversation had taken and now it shouldn't be so difficult to just...

"Do not even think about it, Severus Snape!"

Ebony eyes shot up to clash with verdant pools of absolute determination and a new and unwelcome kind of tension suddenly exploded between them.

"I have nothing to say to you, Potter. Let's avert this conflict altogether. I was in _need_ of a _shock_ and you did provide a truly exemplary one, you have my heartfelt thanks. Now there shouldn't be any reason to mention this ever again. Not at all. Not in any way, shape, or form. We move on and we forget it and this whole... _ghastly_ _conversation_ becomes just... one of those things that was totally unnecessary"

Potter gaped at him for a whole minute, he was blinking truly stupidly behind the clear lenses of his disorientlingly unfamiliar glasses.

"You are _unbelievable_!. How can you give me a half-hour lecture on all the reasons why we should forget it without ever, not even _once_, actually _mentioning_ what happened?"

He cringed in response to the increasingly agitated hissing that was coming from the auror's incensed lips.

"Potter..."

"I KISSED YOU, OK? There, I've said it!. Now you can go right ahead and pale and shake and bloody _faint_ for all I care, Severus!.

I'm going to look you in the face and call it like it was, and you are going to stand right here and listen to it: I _kissed_ you!. _Snogged_ you!. Planted you one right on the lips!. How am I doing so far, Professor?. Do you like my wide range of synonyms or should I try to think up some more?"

"I'm warning you, boy..." He started to growl in his coldest tone only to be most startlingly interrupted by the vociferous bastard screaming at the very top of his lungs:

"I HAD MY TONGUE DOWN YOUR THROAT, O.K?. I did!. Let's face _that_ _one_ first, Severus!"

He literally cringed away from the insane jerk. Black eyes raked the area in order to convince their frantic owner that the muggles who were passing the field had remained truly oblivious to both their presence and that truly shameful screech.

"I have _nothing_ to add to your unnecessarily... _graphic._.. description of the events in question, Auror Potter" He pointed out with quiet dignity. Thin lips pressed all the while into an almost invisible line of barely repressed fury.

"You have _nothing_ to _add._.." His own words were thrown right back in his face. Returned in a short, barked-like challenging tone that he didn't like. Not in the slightest.

"What if I _do_ _it_ again then?. Would you be equally unwilling to... _comment_?"

Now the child was truly irking him. He was trying to poke him into open confrontation and Severus refused to give him the satisfaction.

"To be perfectly honest, I don't think there is a _possibility_ that the particular chain of _unfortunate_ _events_ leading up to that _regrettable_ _development_ will ever be repeated"

Potter's eyes were bright with a fragile kind of sorrow-filled grief.

"It was a kiss, Severus. Just a _kiss_!. One doesn't have to be beyond hysterical to receive one of those. They could come our way at any point, you see?. Even here, in this park... It could just _happen, _you know_?..._So very _easily..."_

He took a hasty step backwards and then another. Pointedly increasing the distance that separated him from the brat while those strangely hurt emerald eyes looked on, utterly dejected...

_"This_ conversation is now at an end, Mr. Potter, if you don't mind. I have no _interest_ whatsoever on the what _ifs_ of this world. Even less in those that are so utterly risible that only the most ridiculous of minds would even bother with the useless task of pondering them.

I find it truly _humiliating_ that you'd dare to tease me with the possibility of it ever being repeated. I care _not_ for those sorts of _things_ and have no wish, none whatsoever, of being reminded of it either now or in the future. Am I making myself clear?"

"You find it _humiliating?._ _You._ Find... _It..._ _HUMILIATING?_" Potter laughed so harshly that he startled off the few pigeons that had descended to peck morosely at the yellow grass. "Do you have any _idea_ of how many people I've _bedded?._ There are _millions_ out there who'd kill their bloody _mothers_ for a kiss of mine, Severus!. An actual kiss. One of those with tongues and teeth and body contact involved... not a single little _peck_ devoid of any emotion or actual participation from at least one half of the equation!.

I've kissed and _kissed_ _AND_ _KISSED_ so many people that I have lost count, for Godric's sake!. And not _one_ of the recipients of my _attentions_ has ever run out of the room screaming, like some kind of little Victorian virgin!"

He was _livid._ Absolutely enraged by the _daring_ of this creature!. How dare Potter try to continue this _unwanted_ conversation, after being explicitly told that it was not to his taste?. How dare the brat _try_ to humiliate him by _implying_ that he'd been... the _least_ _remarkable_ _notch_ on a very long pole of... _depraved_ _over-indulgence_?.

He had no need to hear any further. Had no intention of doing so, in fact!.

"How very... _delightful..._ for you then, Auror Potter. May I suggest that you return to your... _hordes..._ of admirers and swiftly proceed to heroically save their _endangered_ mothers by actually delivering your _exemplary_ _smooches_ without requesting so harsh a payment?.

Your many fans will be happy enough to enjoy the _personal_ attention, I am sure. Just as you've so very... _gentlemanly..._ boasted.

I'm certain you'll enjoy it, too, once all that... tongue and teeth and the body contact that you so highly value enter into the equation and I'll be left in solitary splendor with all my _wonderful_ _Victorian_ _reticence,_ EXACTLY AS I HAVE BEEN REQUESTING ALL ALONG!"

They both trembled with indignant, explosive fury in the aftermath of that truly inflamed rant.

Green eyes that were wide and harsh and absolutely incensed flashed with volcanic-like emotion as Severus tried to whirl around. Attempted to turn his head, his body, his whole self away from the man before him and abandon the scene of this awful debacle altogether.

He was _prevented_ from following through, though. Callused digits closed around his thin wrist as he turned away, halting the smoothness of his motion with a brutally harsh pull.

His face turned pale with anger as he shot ebony colored daggers down, towards that hand.

"Release me, Mr. Potter. _NOW!_"

"I resent the implication that I am some kind of slut for the masses!" The boy snapped at him virulently.

"It wasn't _me_ the one who said he's kissed millions. Do not dish your dirt out, unless you can take it like a man when it gets thrown back in your face, Potter!"

The auror's huge hand jerked him closer. Brutal force was used to bend his will to that of the child, at least for the moment...

"How many have _YOU_ kissed then?. A dozen?. Two?. A hundred?..."

He was utterly gobsmacked by the question. By the dark, menacing undertone that the voice of the gryffindor had acquired as it pronounced it. By the utterly _preposterous_ idea that _anyone_ would even imagine that he'd been _touched. Ever!._ By a _breathing,_ _willing_ partner, let alone a _hundred!..._

He pulled his wrist free with so forceful a motion that he felt it when the cuff of his sleeve ripped off.

"I, unlike you, child, am a _gentleman._ I have perfect understanding of what the term _privacy_ actually means and _my_ _own_ is more precious to me than unicorn horn, Potter. I wouldn't _share_ that kind of information with the likes of _you. _Not for all the gold in Gringotts!"

The eyes that settled over him then were narrowed and derisive.

"Maybe I already know. I saw most of your memories when you were locked in that coma, anyway. What makes you think that I didn't see you fornicating with half of your lovers?"

His black eyes gave nothing away. Not his shock at being spoken thus. Not his joy at having certain knowledge that there were things about his past that were still known only to him. Nor the absolute rage that surged within him, like a tidal wave of unmeasurable wrath.

"Fornicating is for _whores _and for you, obviously, Potter!. The rest of _us_, mere mortals, prefer to indulge in a sharing of _emotion_ that it's enhanced by the kind of act that I am starting to doubt you've ever truly participated in"

His words acted like a brutally delivered verbal slap that seemed to harm the boy to his very core.

Proof was there: in the sudden, complete paling of the young features. In the fact that a clear, wounded film of crystalline tears had appeared, from seemingly nowhere, and was now tainting with its presence the almost otherworldly beauty of those green eyes...

"I can _do_ _emotion_, Severus... I can do _enough_ of it for the _both_ of _us_!."

He startled backwards then. Reading the Gryffindor's intention very clearly. It was plainly written in the suddenly determined set of that mouth, in the dark undertones that had added so much depth to those two sentences and he knew, just _knew_ with perfect, stark insight, that he child would attempt to seize him with his very next motion. That he'd be put again in the unendurable position of having to accept the touch of those young lips upon his own...

And that this time... this time it'll be far worse because he'd seen the whole thing coming. He'd roused the boy's temper to the point were it was obvious that Potter felt he needed to teach him a lesson. A lesson that Severus had no intention of allowing himself to be taught.

He panicked and flung both hands up between them in a wild and desperate motion. Long dark hair flew all around his strained face as his black eyes clashed with the purposeful expression that was fleeting through the green gaze of the Head Auror.

"Potter!... You must take a hold of yourself. Cease and desist at once from your current course of action!"

The jerk laughed with a wounded, bitter bark of sheer challenge:

"Or _what_, Professor?. What exactly would _you_ _do_?. What _could_ you do?. You are unarmed and alone in here with me. You are at _my_ _mercy_ now and you've got this one coming!. Just to _show_ _you_ how very _wrong_ about the whole of it you actually are."

Potter lunged for him and his heart halted. His breath hitched and his every nerve contracted with sheer horror. He felt _faint_ with the awful _knowledge_ that he'd have to endure such touch or leave...

His skin turned utterly clammy and he wished himself a million miles away from here, safe and sound inside his rooms at Hogwarts... he wished that it was possible for him to find shelter inside the very same rooms that he'd believed to have been destroyed beyond repair during the war.

He felt his every bone being crushed with mighty force and jerked his whole head away, in instinctive rejection to the unwanted intimacy that would certainly follow.

But the kiss that he so feared never came...

The terrible pressure eased suddenly off his person and he was left alone, utterly free... It was then that he realized that the feeling had not been caused by Potter at all. That the auror couldn't have had enough time to grab him so tightly. He discovered then too that the child was, in fact, nowhere to be seen and that he'd managed, incredibly, to apparate himself to Hogwarts...

TBC...


	24. Chapter 24

Author's note: Everything written between {} is part of a conversation held through a link established by Legilimency.

_**THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 24**_

His arrival at the school shocked him so utterly that he simply stood there, like some kind of weak-minded nincompoop, for well over five minutes.

He blinked dazedly through the chaotic miasma of his own rattled thoughts. His reeling senses recognized his own chambers at Hogwarts with a deep sense of belonging and he attempted to wrap his buzzing mind around the idea that he had not only apparated himself half-way across the United Kingdom, but he'd also managed to bypass the complicated set of wards that protected the ancient building itself. This was just too... bizarre!

The rooms were exactly as he remembered them: Silent, shadowed and refreshingly cool. Their very familiarity was a welcome reprieve that soothed his altered senses and allowed him to breathe with something approaching his usual self-possession for the first time since he'd abandoned the coffee shop where he'd spent the first part of his afternoon.

His precious books were all here. He could recognize most of the covers with the ease of a man who had read every single one of them at least twice. He smiled, dizzy with relief, with genuine, unmitigated joy as he realized that somehow, against all the odds, his beloved books had actually made it through the war intact...

He recognized the little marks of constant use that he'd left on them: a ripped binding here, the shadow of an inky fingerprint there, the delicate edges of the foreign bookmark that Draco had brought him from his first trip to France, poking out of the last book that he'd been reading...

He recognized every nick-knack that he'd accumulated along the way, too. All of them perched exactly where they should. It all looked as if he'd never abandoned these rooms, as if he'd never been forced to leave the safety of Hogwarts. As if he'd never returned: shrouded, like a Dementor, within the shameful glory of his new position as the Dark Lord's second in command to inhabit the bedchamber of the very man he'd murdered in order to achieve such recognition...

Albus!...

The old man's presence felt more immediate now than ever before. His memory was here, imprinted on the chair he'd so often sat on. It echoed around the fireplace that they both had contemplated until their eyes started to cross with the effort, during thousands of interminable nights filled with nothing but despair and powerless dejection. They had tried so hard... and they had failed so often...

The war had been their whole life for so long that it had felt as if they'd never really known peace...

Albus' touch seemed to have left echoes everywhere: on the mantelpiece, on the chairs and table, on the very walls themselves. On the books and spoons and forks. On the handle of the cup that he used to drink from, a purple monstrosity with yellow and white daisies that Severus could see perched inside the cabinet at the other end of the room, exactly were Albus always left it...

His old chessboard, chipped on the the left hand corner since his late teens, awaited them. It still sat atop the small table under the window. White and black pieces quiescent as they lay carelessly abandoned, still holding the positions from the last game they'd been playing. Patiently awaiting for the end of a match that now... would never come...

Severus walked very slowly towards it, heart banging wildly in in his throat and a lump the size of China squeezing his chest with strength enough to kill him. His dark eyes settled over the board and he looked at it thoughtfully for a very long time.

Finally he forced his trembling fingers to pick both the white rook and king. With a heavy heart he proceeded to exchange their positions with one another, castling them. On the other side of the board the black rook now faced forwards, directly in the path of the white one...

Suicide, of course. He should had seen it earlier. The pale tower's fate had always been death. It was the only way to move the game forwards, after all...

He pushed the opposing rook into attack and it destroyed his equal firmly, with great relish... but it left its king exposed in the process...

A lone knight that was pale and short and had been truly insignificant to the game until that very second, had now access to the black and imposing piece that was the dark king. One more movement then, a short, decisive push, and the game that they'd been agonizing over for well over a fortnight had been finally won in a bloody, but clever victory for the white pieces...

"That'll be check-mate then, Albus... Well played, of course. Diabolical, like every other plan that you ever devised, but... brutally effective in the end. Well played. Well played, indeed..."

He felt strange as he stood there. Pale hands holding the small pieces. Black eyes filled with old hurt.

"You knew that he'll try to kill me. Didn't you, old man?. You knew that he'd make that mistake about the blasted wand... You must have!. The wand's allegiance was the only card left in the wind...

It couldn't have been left to me, of course. That was the whole point. The one mistaken assumption that the Lord couldn't be allowed to ever question...

You used Draco just as badly as you used Potter. You knew that my love for my godchild would keep me silent when the time to sacrifice myself finally came, while my loyalty towards you would force the rest. Did Draco actually disarm you, or did you allow him to do so?..."

The sigh that rent the air was heavy and weary, forlorn. He felt trapped within a vortex of old hurts. Of old betrayal. He didn't want to remember any of this. Didn't want to taint what remained of his love for that old man with the bitterness brought on by actions that had actually been necessary...

It had been war, after all. Those were the words that he himself had used to fend off Minnie's unwanted apologies. He'd do well to try following at least some of what he preached, but... he had been betrayed and used. Manipulated by two bloody experts before being sacrificed by the both of them.

Betrayal felt like a wound that'd never heal. Like a cancer. Like the acid touch of a bitterness that he wasn't even certain he could swallow...

It had been his choice, of course. Albus had explained his plan and then ignored Severus' every attempt to make him see reason... but it had been his own dismal failure to provide an alternative that had forced him to reluctantly agree to the only thing that might actually work and his choices, as correct as they might have been, had still left him bleeding to death on that shack's floor...

Only Draco had stayed true to him until the very end. Only Draco had wanted to save him...

His godchild wouldn't be very happy to discover that Severus had decided to repay his efforts by forfeiting his new life to Potter, in order to see Draco himself safe...

It didn't really matter what the gryffindor's true intentions may had been at the time, they had still sworn that idiotic vow upon Draco's life. An oath that demanded that Severus himself resided with the brat... Never to abandon their joint domicile with the intention of living somewhere else...

Panic seized him as he realized what he'd done: he'd escaped the brat!. Transported himself hundreds of miles North from their current residence, without so much as a by-your-leave. He had to return to London AT ONCE!. Before the auror decided to start believing that he had reneged on their pact.

Horrified awareness painted shadows of determination across the depths of his eyes and he swirled in a half-arch, mind ablaze with an image of endless beige. He failed to feel the uncomfortable constriction so typical of apparition. Failed to perform the simple magical task that had brought him here, in the first place and his whole being froze into the utter immobility of sheer terror.

HE. HAD. TO. GET. BACK. NOW!

He tried and tried. And. Tried. AND. TRIED!. He cleared his mind and brought forth an image of that ridiculously soulless place that Potter dared to call home. He pictured it so hard that he started to fear that the stupid image would be forever imprinted in the back of his skull, but... It didn't work!.

He took his wand out and held it before him but the pale birch wood responded to him with the same lack of interest that it had shown him in the past weeks. He had no clue as to how he'd managed to apparate himself and now he found, to his increasing horror, that he could not repeat it.

Panic seized him. The kind of abject, shocked trepidation that could freeze a man's blood inside his veins. He needed to find the boy then, explain to him that he was trapped here without recourse to transport. But... how could he do that?. He had absolutely no idea if the child even had a floo connexion in that ridiculous place and, even if Potter did, how did he call out for it? Did the flat have a name, like most wizarding properties? Was it warded against unexpected callers? Would Potter even be there? He'd left him behind, on that patch of grass, in the bloody middle of London!.

He wasn't even sure if these rooms were still connected to the network...

He whirled around wildly, widened ebony eyes searching for something around him, anything, that might actually inspire him with something even approaching a solution, but nothing came to mind. NOTHING!.

That was when he felt the first touch of Legilimency. A knock-like connexion. The uncalled for contact, oddly hesitant and urgent at the same time, reminded him of the one point of contention that had kept him truly at odds with the child in recent times. He detested the very idea of allowing Potter in, but he knew that this must be him!. He recognized the familiar touch of the boy's magic with the same kind of ease with which he'd learned to recognize Albus' own cadence of fast knocks upon his door. Or Minnie's.

His shields dropped one by one. Slowly. Reluctantly. Hoping that the child would be willing to offer him some... help.

{Potter?}

The mind that was attempting to reach him seemed to sag with relief. There was no more pushing against Severus' own consciousness, he could feel no more force being directed towards his mental barriers in order to enter further in than the figurative hallway of his awareness. But he could sense that the presence remained there: a strong, unwavering companion that seemed to anchor itself into position before answering him frantically.

{Severus... Are you injured?. Did you splinch yourself?. Oh, Gosh... I. AM. SO. SORRY!. I should have never pushed you like that!}

Severus had to pinch the bridge of his own nose hard in order to avoid screaming at the little miscreant's mind the more than obvious fact that now was NOT the time to have that conversation. Now they were in the middle of an actual crisis that had to be resolved immediately!.

{I am all right, Potter}

The child's presence became stronger. Warmer. Closer to him, somehow, and that unnerved him immeasurably. He wasn't accustomed to this kind of interaction. Avoiding all forms of mental communion was the primarily goal of Occlumency, after all, and he had excelled at that particular practice for as long as he'd been aware of it's existence.

{Severus?}

{What?}

The boy retreated suddenly. There was a terrifying second or two when he could not feel that foreign presence and he floundered. He knew that he'd been short with the menace, but... for Potter to have just... severed all connexion with him because of a little show of temper was a bit on the ruthless side!. Even for James Potter's spawn...

He needed help, dammit!. He needed it now. He could not imagine what he'd do, if it turned out that the auror had just left him to his own devices.

{Potter!. Potter?... I can't believe you'd be so selfish that...}

{I am here, Severus!. You've got to calm down. I have no idea of what we are doing, OK?. I panicked when you disapparated and I couldn't immediately follow. It was exactly the same when you went out that first time, your lack of magic makes you untraceable. I have Hermione here with me, she's the one who suggested trying to contact you this way again. I know how much you hate it, and I'm sorry, but we couldn't think of anything else!}

Somehow that disjointed rambling made things better and he felt strangely soothed by the fact that the child had actually thought clearly enough to find some help.

His legs turned to water and he collapsed into his old high-backed chair with a mix of trepidation and sheer dread... It was hard for him, truly hard, to put his faith in others. And Potter's track record in relation to himself was... inauspicious... at best.

He understood that he was trapped here, at least for the moment. That if he was to return to the boy's flat and, therefore, fulfill the requirements of the oath he'd sworn on Draco's life, he had to allow himself to be... dependent... on the child.

The sole idea chilled him right down to his very marrow, though. He couldn't in good conscience doubt the abilities of both, Potter and Granger. He doubted that the last third of the fantastic trio would have been left out of this, so... he felt reasonably certain that his fate was in the hands of the wonderful team extraordinaire. The very same that had brought down the Dark Lord. He knew that these three could do anything that they set their minds to do, but... he had never been a recipient of their best efforts, at least not while he'd been conscious of it...

{Severus?. I need you to concentrate on your body. Try to feel every part of it, see if there's anything, anything at all, that feels odd to you. Are you certain that you are not hurt?}

He felt like snorting. What was wrong with the idiot?. He had already informed him that he was perfectly fine!.

{There's nothing wrong with me, boy!. Now... how do you propose I get back?. I have tried to apparate out of here but I've failed...}

That admission was so hard that he started shaking. To have found himself in the position of having to confess such a thing to Lily's child was simply... humiliating!.

{You tried to apparate?. Severus!... It's bad enough that you managed it in the park, you could have killed yourself!. Apparition is one of the most dangerous acts of magic, it's accountable for more wizarding deaths a year than any other hex or potion put together. Promise me that you won't try it again, unless there's someone with you...}

His mind boggled. Was the child truly attempting to... manage... him?.

{I need your assistance to return, Potter. Not a lecture on the safety of a procedure that I have been executing with utmost perfection for longer that you have been alive!}

On the other side of the link the auror became clearly irritated. There was a strange pause, almost as if their connexion had been severed, before he felt the whole pressure of that uncomfortably alien awareness focus on him once again.

{Hermione thinks that this accident might have helped quick-start your magic back. Have you

attempted any other charm?. Do you have your wand with you?}

He considered the thought. It was a possibility, of course, but he... he still felt mostly empty. He'd felt no connexion with his wand when he'd held it earlier, no thrum of power had coursed through his veins, through his being... He'd... Wouldn't he have sensed it if his magic had returned?...

He took the precious length of birch out of it's holster with shaking digits, lifting the wand very slowly and pointing it precisely at one of the shelves. His dry lips whispered the most simplest of all charms as he held on to the mental picture of Albus' purple cup flying across that small distance and straight into his hand...

Nothing happened: Not. A. Thing!... and he slumped against the backrest of the chair with utmost dejection.

His hands rose: pale, long fingered, trembling... to cover the whole of his face in a gesture of sorrow so profound that, for a second, he was utterly certain that it might kill him.

{Severus?. Severus what has happened to you?}

Panicked terror had entered the voice within his head and he jolted upon hearing it. He was startled now, perfectly horrified by the suspicion that the boy... the boy could sense his every emotion!.

{I have not recovered. I am still a squib.}

Heartbreak...

He perceived it like a shadow inside his head. Like the echoes of a memory long forgotten. Like the imprint of an emotion left behind... He could not hold it or change it. He could only... feel it and it was so potent, so absolutely frightening in its enormity, that it shook him to his core. It left him reeling...

Potter... These were Potter's own feelings. They had to be!.

{You are not a squib, Severus!. You are just... I don't know... unable to reach your power. That doesn't mean that you've lost it or that it won't return. It only means that we'll have to try harder to get it back.}

He didn't know how to answer. He could not bear the thought of attempting to... soothe... the child's sorrow while his own felt so raw.

He'd have preferred to just... ignore the whole issue for now. But, of course, Potter being the gryffindor that he was could understand no such instincts...

{Severus?. Are you still there?. Didn't you hear me?. We'll make you better, I swear it!. We won't give up until you are back to having full and terrifying command of that wand of yours again...}

He sighed. Disheartened. Frustrated. Fed up with all that incessant pushing of his every touchy button that the boy liked to engage in.

{I must return to you, Potter. At once!. Our oath requires me to "remain under your roof at all times." My actions have put Draco in terrible danger and I won't have my godson suffer because I made a stupid mistake!}

The link wavered as if Potter's concentration had just broken. He could sense the auror's distress spear through his mind with the sharpness of a dagger.

{OH... Oh, shit! Dammit!. I hadn't thought about that... I can't believe how stu...}

The flow of that thought was cut abruptly. A wall had suddenly appeared between them and, for half a second, Severus found himself once more completely alone within his own head. He discovered then, to his unending surprise, that he particularly detested the feeling in his current circumstances and the idea that he might have come to believe that Lily's child would, in fact, actually help him, stunned him so profoundly that when he felt the boy's thoughts once more, it took him almost a minute to respond.

{Professor? I can't apparate straight to you, no matter how hard I try it. Are you blocking me in any way?}

{Blocking you?. How could I?. I have no magic, Potter!}

The presence in his head became as irritated as he felt.

{It doesn't make any sense, I know that!. But I am picturing you as hard as I can and still nothing happens. There's no pull at all!. It feels as if... as if you are behind a wall of some kind...}

He pondered that over. It fit with his own knowledge about the anti-apparition wards set all around the castle, but then... he himself had been able to cross them. Potter had done so, too, if it was indeed true that he'd been brought here on the day of his release from Azkaban. He remembered screaming at the little menace loudly enough to put himself into respiratory arrest and the auror had removed him from these very rooms, Apparated straight out of them...

{Wait!... Wait, Professor. Were you just thinking that I... I... Are you at Hogwarts?. Oh, Merciful Godric!. These are wonderful news!}

He was staggered by the sudden wave of unadulterated relief that flooded the mental link. There was just... so much of it that his head began to pound.

{Potter!. You've got to tone down your emotions or you are going to overwhelm me!. I am unaccustomed to dealing with this amount of... feeling!}

The link wavered once more. A blank wall began to appear, forming a shaky barrier between their minds.

{I'm sorry, Severus. I'm not used to doing this while you are awake. In all the time that I spent inside your mind, while I was trying to bring you out of your coma, you only ever bothered to actually interact with me once and it was to block me off!}

He swallowed uneasily. He disliked this particular topic in the extreme. He was reluctant to engage in any kind of discussion that involved this matter under normal circumstances, and had absolutely no intention of doing it while he had the bloody brat inside his head!.

{Potter... Get in here and bring me back to your place, for Salazar's sake!}

The boy laughed, apparently too relieved to bother picking up a fight right at that second.

{I can't apparate to Hogwarts. You'll have to wait a while. OK?. I'll ship myself to Hogsmeade and walk up from there. Did I hear correctly when you thought about being back in your old chambers?}

He was frustrated by the boy's reluctance to get on with his relocation back to London.

{Don't be ridiculous, Potter!. Even though I'm absolutely magic-less at the moment, I managed to apparate here without any trouble. Although I was dying at the time, I clearly remember you crossing these wards before. There is no need for this delay!}

Potter's side of the link turned warm and kind of... mushy?. There was a strange, gentle feeling of... affection... flooding his senses as the youth's thoughts filtered into his:

{You are the HEADMASTER of Hogwarts, Severus!. And you are not magic-less, you are just a bit... weak.

I managed to cross the wards because YOU were with me at the time. You were unable to apparate on your own that day. It was a matter of life or death: your life or death... I believe that the castle allowed me to transport you over to the infirmary in an attempt to protect you}

He was flummoxed by the boy's account of those particular events. He'd seen them so very differently at the time. He wondered if this was true. If he could have misunderstood the whole situation so completely... If it was indeed possible that he could have been so utterly wrong about... everything!.

A weakening sense of longing enveloped him as his memory settled on that brief glimpse of Poppy that he'd caught just before unconsciousness had claimed him, and he fancied that he could literally touch with the tips of his fingers the powerful desire to just... see her... that had so suddenly seized him.

{Severus? Do you want to stay there? For tonight at least?. You could visit with... Madam Pomfrey for real, Severus. She's been so flooded with work that she didn't manage to coincide with you at the hospital while you were awake. Professor Flitwick had the same bad timing... he is the one we consulted about the shield that we ended up putting on your arm and... Draco, he... he is there as well. I'm sure that you'd love to have dinner with the lot of them...}

Potter... He'd forgotten that the boy was still linked to him, snooping inside his thoughts with his own given permission. He was absolutely incensed with himself!. With the auror. With the whole god-awful situation!.

{Even If I wanted to do that, I can't, Mr Potter!. Or have you forgotten the letter of our oath?. I'm to stay under your roof, as far as I am aware this school doesn't qualify as such. It's pointless to engage in futile yearnings that can never come to be, while my godson's very life hangs on the line!}

There was a void of all thought. Of all feeling. A moment were the brave gryffindor seemed to have hidden from him completely. Then he was back with a fiercely determined resolution.

Potter's mind seemed to be... awash with purpose. With that kind of abrupt, stubborn passion that had helped him win the war in the end.

{But you want to stay, don't you, Severus?. What's more I'd say you need to stay, you haven't seen any of your old colleagues properly and you've... missed them. You haven't been to the castle at all. You...

I can't believe I didn't see it before!. You... you apparated there, the moment that you felt threatened, because that's the place you call home. Being there will do you good, even if it's not completely safe for you yet to wander around the castle by yourself...}

Severus' eyes burned with unutterable emotion. He felt chocked by the awareness that the boy... the boy knew... this... about him.

{I can't stay!...}

{Yes, you can. I've been living in the castle for almost three years, Severus. I was given a permanent set of rooms there as a token of recognition after the war. They are just down the corridor from your current position. You... you are not really in your original rooms, don't you see?.

You are standing in a set of chambers that have been reconstructed very recently to look exactly like the old ones, you are not even in the dungeons any more. You needed to be closer to the Headmaster's tower, anyway, and we assumed that you wouldn't want to go back to Albus' quarters, so...}

The name of his former mentor cropped into the conversation so unexpectedly that he flinched. His mind lost it's grip on the boy's and the connexion that linked them together was suddenly and quite brutally severed.

{Severus?. Severus!. I'm sorry! I... I won't mention him again, O.K?}

He took a deep, calming breath. Feeling humiliated, beyond all possible recovery, by the fact that he had shown this much weakness to the child.

He felt vulnerable and uncomfortable with the level of... intimacy... that sharing a mental conversation seemed to achieve, when compared to having a regular one.

He found out that he could not hide his thoughts away. Nor his reactions. Everything, everything, that he felt or pondered upon was out in the open. Exposed. Put on display, like the exhibit in a museum, for Lily's child to see...

{I'm sorry, Mr. Potter. I... I seem to be unable to control the constant bleeding of my own... reactions... through our link}

The apology left his mind with a dreadful sense of urgency. He didn't want the child to continue eroding his defenses any more. He wanted to... cast a veil over his weaknesses, allow himself some time to hide them...

Surprisingly Potter followed his lead after only a second or two of clear hesitation.

{Don't worry, Severus. I don't think anyone has used this kind of magic to talk to another wizard in centuries... We couldn't find any record of it since the floo network was invented, but that is a discussion that we can have another day. Now listen: I think you should stay and I believe that the oath will allow it. My private rooms are actually right there, fifth door to the right from your own... You can get in and spend the night there. It'll still be my roof, don't you see?. That way you can... have some time for yourself, unless you... Do you want me to come and stay there with you?. Or would you prefer it if I bring you back, instead?}

Those last two questions sounded breathless somehow, expectant. There was some sort of very weird vibe that he was getting a hint of through the link. He could not understand it, though. It was like a... fluttery... kind of nervousness. A jittery agitation that permeated his senses like a cloud of suffocatingly dense tension.

Potter seemed to be literally entrapped by it. Tangled like a moth within this web of helplessness and... fear. Of confusion and hope. Of mind-numbingly deep terror...

That whole mess of emotion shocked Severus. It unnerved him. Unsettled him. Made him crave the sheer relief of the child's... absence.

Like a veil of fog that obscures everything within it, Potter's thoughts vanished suddenly and their disappearance was as frightening as their presence had been.

{I see... Severus. It's all right.} Those six words crossed over to him without any effort, though. They were thought out gently, but also... with a heartbreaking kind of sadness. A veritable well of uncontainable misery shone through the wobbly cracks on the wall that the boy was trying to build between their minds.

Severus floundered as he sat in his old chair. He felt trapped within the soothing darkness of these chambers that were so very reminiscent of the ones they mimicked that he couldn't tell them apart.

He was too far away from Potter to be able to offer him... what? Solace?. Comfort?. He didn't even understand what it was that the bloody brat wanted from him half of the time...

{Of course you don't, Professor. How could you?. It's too soon for all of that. I knew that already, only... It's hard, you know? So hard!. You are right here all the time and I've been waiting for so long that I just... sometimes I lose it, Severus!. I am sorry...}

He blinked in the gloom of the room, utterly spooked by the ease with which the boy traveled through his mind.

{I wish you wouldn't do that, Potter!}

{I told you before that I don't do it on purpose!. It is instinctive, don't you see?. I've been doing it for so long that I... It's like it became my first reaction, or something!... Every time I so much as think about you needing help, the next thing that I notice is that my mind is already trying to cast the Legilimency spell.

I'm going to send a Patronus to Professor Mcgonagal. She'll go around to collect you, OK?. Stay there for tonight and I... I'll come visit you tomorrow. We'll talk about this mess then, how about that?}

He wanted to do it so badly that he could not keep the pleasurable warmth that filled his whole being, at the very idea of it, from spilling out into the link...

The boy responded to it immediately with a rueful, somber tone:

{Then you stay, Severus. It's that easy, you see?. I want to make you happy...}

He could feel the unbearable sense of dejection that was filling his whole chest with a cold sadness. He understood that the awful feeling must be coming straight from the auror's head, but he could not bring himself to address the boy's obvious distress. Not within his mind. Not aloud, in words. Not in any way that would force either of them to acknowledge that there were... things... about the current state of their damaged friendship that were harming them both...

{How would I...? Will your wards even allow me to enter your personal chambers, Mr. Potter?. I won't be able to fiddle with them if they don't.}

There was laughter then. Amused, gentle, yearning. He could feel the touch of Potter's caring magic seeping down, into his very bones, even as his every braincell pulsed with the genuine sincerity that reverberated, clear like a teardrop, through the gryffindor's simple answer:

{Of course they will let you in, Severus. No door of mine will remain closed to you for as long as my heart beats...}

TBC...


	25. Chapter 25

_**THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 25**_

"You _accidentally_ disapparated? Really? Is that even _possible_?" Draco seemed shocked out of his usual elegant poise, his eyes were shot through with gray shards of true disbelief and his pale lips were pursed with a thoughtful kind of wonder.

"Actually... I don't really _care_ if it's not possible. You. Performed. Magic, Godfather. _Magic!_. That comes to prove the fact that you can access it! What were you doing when it happened? Were you holding your wand? Were you trying to use a related charm? Something along the lines of an... Accio?

By Salazar, these are the most _wonderful_ news!..."

Severus smiled on the receiving end of his precious boy's boundless joy. His gaze lowered and he concentrated on examining his own hands with something that was too akin to forced concentration to pass muster with the naturally suspicious mind of his godchild...

"I... No. I was _not_ holding my wand at the time, Draco. I had it on my person, though. Fastened to it's holder, as usual, but... what happened was completely _unexpected._ Unintentional. A straightforward bout of... _wish_ _magic_, if you will"

Minnie's smile at that was a study in absolute delight.

"You _wished_ yourself at _home_ and here you are!... Doesn't it still astonish you just how _beautiful_ a _gift_ magic truly is, Severus?"

He blinked at her, perfectly shocked. Unsure of what, exactly, could have given her the mind-boggling idea that he actually possessed the kind of simpering nature necessary to _wish_ himself somewhere out of mere... _fondness_.

Draco's clearly startled features reflected his own equally astounded disbelief but, thankfully, his boy didn't seem particularly inclined to burst her bubble. They both looked at each other, neutral expressions veiling the absolute hilarity that they were concealing behind their perfectly practiced slytherin masks. On his godson's right Poppy's small frame twitched anxiously.

"It _troubles_ me that you went through apparition, Severus. I'd love to ran a scan over you, with your permission, of course, just to assure myself that there's nothing untoward with your health. Don't get me wrong, I love it that you are here, but... all of this is just too _irregular_ and we have been so worried about you...

It drove me _spare_ to find you sleeping every single time that I managed to visit St. Mungo's. Minnie assured me that she'd spoken to you herself, but... it's not the same is it?. To have you _here_. To see you _move_. To _hear_ your voice once more... Severus... You've got no _idea_ of how much I've _missed_ you!"

He was utterly unprepared for the shock that he received when she, literally, shot out of her chair and _launched_ herself at him. Her wiry frame shook with the strength of unreasonable feminine sobs and she _squeezed_ him with a zeal that he'd never known she possessed, hanging herself tightly from his neck.

He patted her back awkwardly. Uncomfortably. A man utterly at a loss about how to deal with the inexplicable need for... _cuddles_... so often displayed by the female portion of his own species.

Thankfully Rubeus took pity on him, coming to his rescue with a gigantic, meaty hand that he placed carefully around Poppy in order to lift her away from Severus' own frame.

"There, there, Poppy. Yer don wanna put too much pressure o'er the Headmaster's lungs do ya?. He sure looks much too pale for tha' kin-o' thing..."

She smiled waveringly, but with a bright, delighted joy that turned her cheerful blue eyes into twin pools of soft contentment.

"Oh. Yes. Of course... you must forgive my enthusiasm, Severus. I'd bet I just gave you a coronary with that display of mine, but... It was _genuine_. You do _know_ that, don't you, my friend?. For all that stiff formality of yours there must be something in there that tells you when you are being honestly held in high regard"

His smile to her was warm and genuine, too. A gesture very few people ever received from him.

"I have never _doubted_ your friendship, Poppy. I am, of course, glad to see that it has remained unchanged throughout my... _absence_"

"I wouldn't have called that coma of yours an _absence_, Severus. You make it sound like a sabbatical. You were truly sick, you know?. Had us worried right out of our minds"

Minnie got up to hug their co-worker tightly.

"Now, _now_, Poppy... you should calm down a bit. Sit back down, will you?. Severus is here with us, is he not?. He has _finally_ come home and there's no need to make him run away again with all this drama"

Everyone around the room chuckled. It was still early evening and they had decided to settle down in the teacher's lounge for a while, after the initial shock of Severus' sudden appearance at the school had finally wound down.

Classes had already finished for the day and there was still at least an hour left before dinner was served. Everyone had received him with delight. He'd been shocked to realize just how much the staff had... _relished..._ his sudden appearance. Minnie had arrived so fast after he'd severed that uncomfortable mental connexion with Potter that he was sure she must have been flying up the steps...

She'd barely knocked on the door before she pushed it open and then had proceeded to, literally, jump on him like some bizarre imitation of a Tartan-wearing cloud.

_Everyone_ had been the same. From Fillius to Argus, passing through Cybil, Aurora, Poppy, Rubeus and, of course, Draco...

There were some whom he hadn't seen yet, like Madam Pince, who was still busy in the library... and others that he'd failed to recognize, like the new muggle studies teacher. Some young man who stared at him for two whole minutes without blinking, before shaking his hand effusively.

"Heard that the Headmaster's back home. _Where_ is he?. I'm dying to see his face when he finally sees me and realizes that I'm his Herbology Professor" A dark haired man had swept wildly into the room, a wide smile was splitting his face as he strolled in with the confidence of one who feels truly at home.

The most awful case of sudden... _indigestion._.. gripped Severus' entrails. It was either _that_ or a straight case of plain, old-fashioned apprehension and he refused point blank,to _quiver_ with terror before the likes of the man whom he suspected the unfamiliar youth to be.

Even more disheartening certainty flared within his gut when his dark eyes raked over that awfully familiar frame. He was dark haired and much taller than Severus remembered, but the slightly hunched posture as he walked was the same. The disgustingly grubby appearance of his fingernails had not changed, either. But the too-soft, almost shy-enough-to-wilt-under-the-smallest-pressure look that he used to direct towards the world had definitely vanished. This was a man who'd fought a war and had come out stronger. A victor for sure. A hero as far as he'd been told...

"So it was indeed _you_ who I saw outside of Potter's building, Longbottom. I can't believe you're still tethered to this school, like a little puppy dog. Am I _never_ going to finally be _rid_ of your constant hovering, child?"

Shocked silence fell around the room as those words left his lips. From the most distant corner of the lounge the one ginger menace still remaining from the most demonic set of twins that he'd ever been forced to teach snorted in the eerie silence with apparent disregard for the thick tension.

"That's two galleons, Malfoy!. The man _exploded_ into grouchy moodiness straight away, _without_ even bothering to hold in his opinion for the five minutes that you so stubbornly _insisted_ that he'd wait. You've _cost_ some people money, potion's boy. Half the room took your advice and bet against me"

Minerva turned towards the corner with a thunderous scowl. Surprisingly, though, she did not berate the appalling behavior being hinted at here, but seconded it most heartily:

"I did _not_ lose money. I bet that there'd be trouble _within_ the first five minutes, that is _not_ the same as _implying_ that the Headmaster would wait until after _that_, Professor Weasley. The art of betting requires a certain _finesse_ with one's wording that some people find impossible to master"

Even more bizarrely Longbottom _laughed._

"Don't pull your punches, professor. We all _know_ that you were disparaging of us, _real_ _gryffindors._ Weren't you Minnie?. You've spent so much time dealing with our esteemed Headmaster, and his terrifyingly manipulating predecessor, that you've forgotten how to be truly straightforward"

Severus couldn't take that disrespect, not even in the face of Minerva's own roaring laughter.

"Mr. Longbottom, I don't think that's an appropriate way for a young man, such as yourself, to address a lady whom has not only been your own teacher in the past, but also a former Head of House!.

You _owe_ Minerva Mcgonagal a far greater respect than you've shown her so far. If not because of her status as a mentor of yours throughout your education then, at least, as an acknowledgement to both her _greater_ _maturity_ and far _higher_ _position_ within the hierarchy of this institution"

Titters rose all around him. The small, badly suppressed, almost snorted kind and he became absolutely livid with the lot of them. Utterly _enraged_ by their obvious descent into undignified _childishness_.

His glare raked the whole room, regaling his companions with the most powerful show of his displeasure that he could possibly project and a small but heartfelt sigh escaped Poppy's smiling lips.

"Aww... Severus... You've _no_ _idea_ of how much we've missed you!"

He was shocked right down to his very bones when every head shock in fervent agreement with her words. It didn't made any sense to him, not a single one of them seemed to care that he'd just... _berated_ their behavior in the most stern manner. They were all... s_miling a_t him. Looking soft-eyed and... at peace with all the world...

Longbottom collapsed noisily on the empty chair next to Draco's and proceeded to... _loop_ his arm most audaciously along the back of his godson's seat.

Severus' black eyes narrowed. He stared at that arm rather pointedly and smiled with utter satisfaction when he saw it first twitch and then retreat entirely.

Draco's pale gray gaze clashed with his. His boy smiled good-naturally. The small, sly expression that fleeted through those eyes told him that the slytherin was being... _pursued..._ by the gryffindor and that the _nature_ of said pursuit might not necessarily be... completely _unwelcome_.

His brows furrowed. A fierce sense of protectiveness surging through the whole of his being as he thought back on what he knew of the Longbottom boy: Pureblood. An Orphan. Reasonably well-off...

He'd been a clumsy, self-conscious child. A veritable genius in Herbology or so Pomona had always claimed, but a menace of the worst order near his Potions. How could this one man have managed to snare the attention of his fickle godchild?.

His eyes examined the gryffindor once more, dark gaze raking those grown features with a pensive kind of focus. He supposed that there was nothing _wrong_ with the way Longbottom looked. He was a bit wide in the face, in that kind of earthly, masculine way that some found reasonably attractive. He had honest brown eyes and a look about the mouth that seemed to hint at a man who liked to smile a lot...

He was tall and broad shouldered, a particular weakness of Draco's. He had good teeth and a hair that was, at least, combed into some sort of reasonable tidiness...

He was not _too_ bad, true, but... Draco was _beautiful._ Far too beautiful, and refined, and _much_ richer, and an absolute _prodigy_ with potions... he could have _anyone_ he wanted. Could his godson truly, sincerely, be wanting the Longbottom heir?. Severus couldn't tell from his expression.

He could not even begin to imagine what Luc would have had to say at _this_ development. He felt a sudden and excruciatingly intense headache coming his way.

"Severus? "

Minnie distracted him from his deeply troubling thoughts and his eyes abandoned the Herbology professor to focus gratefully on her.

"Will you join us for dinner at the Great Hall?. I imagine that the news of your arrival has propagated throughout the school like a wild fire by now. It'll be good for the students to finally see someone occupying the Headmaster's chair, unless you think that it'd be too much for you?. You _do_ _look_ a bit ragged... "

He swallowed down his trepidation. The particularly unwelcome request falling so far down the list of things that he _didn't_ want to do that it wasn't even funny.

A million memories of the times when he'd sat upon that seat came back to haunt him. He'd been _useless_ as a Headmaster, utterly _incompetent_. He'd occupied the seat but had held no power...

He'd meekly _allowed_ the Carrows to run riot thorough the school. Threatening the children. Torturing them outright. Punishing those who belonged to the wrong kind of families or didn't have enough magical blood within their veins...

"Godfather?"

Draco's voice had roughened with concern. A pale, elegant hand reached out towards him, until it finally settled over his knee when his boy knelt beside him in order to look him straight in the eyes...

"If it's too much for you I can come up and we'll have dinner in your rooms instead. We'll catch up on all the things that we still haven't told each other, Godfather. No one expects you to do _everything_ on the first go, you know?. Tomorrow will be another day and maybe a small breakfast at the Great Table will be... less _painful_ a memory to confront than a grand dinner."

His hand rose to close over his godchild's own in a gesture that was both grateful and loving.

"Every memory of that year is painful, Draco. Let's not add further insult to the injuries that I've already caused to this school and it's students. To everything that Hogwarts stands for...

I have courage enough to seat once more on that chair that I never _honored._ I can also face the children whom I allowed to come to harm, while I pursued bigger goals.

I must grant them all the opportunity to judge me, to look me in the eye and find me wanting... I did _fail_ them, after all...

It's the _least_ that I can do, I think. This much... This much I _owe_ _them._ And _you._ I owe this to _all _of you."

"Oh, Severus!..." Minnie's sigh was wretched. She sounded shattered, like glass. Awfully choked.

A silence followed her heartfelt gasp and they all remained just as they were, stilled into motionlessness by some emotion or other.

Draco's trembling hand tightened on his. A warm and reassuring pressure that managed to ground him.

"It doesn't have to be done _today_, though. Does it, Godfather.?. Everyone will still be here tomorrow. Or the day after. Or even the day after that. You _must_ _recover_ properly _first_. You look too pale..."

He could see right through that pathetically executed little lie. It was heartening, though. The way in which the child was attempting to... _protect._.. him. But, in this case, it wouldn't do.

"Leaving it for tomorrow won't make it any easier. I'm sure that you still remember the advise I used to give you whenever you were ill..."

Draco smiled ruefully and his lips parted to speak the words aloud. They both ended up uttering them at the same time:

"Taking your potions tomorrow won't make them taste any better and you'll have the added discomfort of having to endure the long night alone while feeling wretched. You'll condemn yourself to all this suffering for no positive gain..."

What was left of the evening passed in a haze of reminiscent re-acquaintance with his old colleagues and, although he truly appreciated their company he soon found out, to his unending dismay, that he could not properly concentrate on any of them.

The prospect of dining once again in the Great Hall terrified him a lot more than he'd let on.

He was beyond petrified at the very idea. Absolutely _daunted_ by his own inexplicable _daring_ in having the actual _nerve_ to present himself before such audience. Dear Salazar... he'd caused the children so much harm...

Slowly the teacher's lounge emptied as one by one his companions excused themselves. The rush to prepare for the evening meal had arrived and everyone was in need of finalizing just that little bit left of grading. Or had the urge to take a shower, change the clothes that they'd been using all day long. Or simply... _unwind..._ before returning to the fray.

Detentions would come eventually as well and they too needed preparation, in some cases...

He was left thus: alone with his own thoughts. _Trapped_ beside his fears. Sharing the empty space with the ghosts of all those things that he'd been so very carefully _refusing_ to confront until now...

Draco had wanted to stay, but he'd _convinced_ his godson to leave with the younger crowd. He _felt_ as if he needed the solitude, a little respite in which to prepare himself for the ordeal that awaited him. He shivered with cold as his dark and anxious gaze swept over the empty room. He felt lonely and afraid. Utterly abandoned, but he was honest enough to understand that this had been, like so many other things in his life, a choice that he had consciously made...

Back in his rooms he found himself opening the wardrobe out of habit and was shocked to see that it still stored a few changes of his clothing. Potter... _Potter_ must have left all this behind...

His teaching robes were all here, along with all the specially warded frocks that he used while brewing highly volatile potions. Most of his formal garments still hung at the very back of the rack. His old scarf, the one that Luc had gifted him on his seventeen birthday, was here too. Right next to his dragon-hide gloves... A couple of hardly used woolly hats were neatly folded on a shelf, right next to the few jumpers that Cissy always insisted on getting him for Christmas. The very same ones that he never wore for exactly the same reason why she bought them: _none_ of them were black.

The attached bathroom looked also the same. His old, richly colored glass bottles still adorned the high shelf where the mirror should have been. He'd learned long ago to use the slightly obscured surfaces to check the accuracy of his shaving charm. Or use the uncomfortably distorted reflexions they projected to soothe the thousands of cuts, bruises and other injuries that he'd acquired over the years. He liked it

better this way. Had grown to almost _relish_ the comforting knowledge that everything that the old, tainted glass could reflect, absolutely _everything,_ would be as ugly and distorted as his own face was...

That simple trick allowed him to... _forget... _most of the time how truly hideous he looked...

He entered the shower cubicle and turned on the water, wallowing in the welcome knowledge that he had the place all to himself. There was no companion here to consider, Potter would not need the room for any reason and he sighed with relief when that thought crossed his mind.

He grabbed his own familiar bar of soap and liberally applied it to his pale, emaciated body. Scrubbing himself mechanically as his mind shifted through the events of the day.

He was tired, truly exhausted... and he knew that he'd be forced to face some of his worst demons before the day was done.

He was shocked, though, by the ease with which the staff had received him. By the friendliness he'd encountered within the very same walls that had witnessed some of the most heinous acts that he'd ever committed.

Everyone had ignored all of that, though, and he'd been left to... _flounder..._ in the discordant vacuum created by the difference between his own more recent memories and the time that had elapsed since they had actually happened in the minds of everyone around him.

Potter's own behavior had shocked him, too. First that awful confrontation on the street and then... He didn't _know_ what to make of this concession that the boy had so generously granted him. All the auror had to do was come to the castle and get him. He himself had been ready to return back to London with the brat, without ever considering the possibility of remaining here and enjoying this... wonderful opportunity to catch up with everyone...

It had caught him by surprise when the auror first suggested that he stay. He'd done it for no apparent gain that Severus could see. There was nothing at all in it for the boy, unless he needed a respite from his old ex-teacher's constant presence, too...

It had been... excruciatingly _intimate,_ though. Sharing his mind with the child in that manner. He'd been on edge all the time, uncomfortably aware of all those foreign emotions that were surging right through him. How could the man live like that?. There had been so much of... _everything..._

A shudder ran through him with just the memory. All that anger and that fear. All that patience and anxiety. All that... inexplicable... sadness...

It was a miracle, really, that Potter could function at all while dealing with such strong, messy and seemingly insurmountable... _mountains..._ of sheer _feeling_ vying for supremacy within his being all of the time.

He abandoned the shower and proceeded to dry himself, still pondering on it. It was strange... to have visited another's head and _seen_ their feelings in so much detail. It was truly humbling to be allowed that much faith by another, to have them grant you ultimate access to their souls. Their hearts. Their minds...

He'd been frightened all the time. Terrified that Potter would attempt to cross a line that he'd rather not have anybody crossing. He'd positioned himself in such a way within his consciousness that it was clear that he wished their interaction to remain on the very surface of his awareness, on the threshold of his mind...

The boy, though, had been open and sincere. There had been no barrier of any kind, no shadow of... _unwillingness._ He was certain that he could have _tromped_ all over that mind, for as long as he'd wished, and Potter... _Potter_ would have probably offered to give him the full tour.

The mere thought managed to halt his every motion. He stood there, towel in hand, wondering about it for a very long time.

_-Why?._ Why does he trust _me_ to that level?. Why does he _care_ about what I want, or need, or even feel? What will he _gain_ from this... _friendship..._ that he is so stubbornly pursuing?-

His head reeled with the total lack of sense that defined the whole thing. He could not begin to imagine what the universally loved Saviour Of The Wizarding World could possibly expect from him. HIM!. Who was, literally... _nobody._ Who had _always_ been _nobody._ Who'd lived and would most probably also die in the most abject obscurity...

He was poor. He had no contacts. His personality was repellent in the extreme, there was nothing about himself that he considered worth bothering this much to... obtain.

If the child wanted someone to reminisce with him about his mother there was always Minnie. Or Pomona. Or about a hundred other people who'd been in school with them.

He shook his head crossly, utterly irritated with himself for even bothering to try and unravel the plainly rose tinted-expectations of a child who'd grown _away_ from his whole family.

Potter was curious about Lily, of course. He must be. He'd only ever met friends of that waste of magic who fathered him. Severus himself had probably been the very first person to open the child's eyes to the idea that his mother... His _mother_ had been _unique_ and _precious _beyond measure...

There hadn't really been any need for Severus to allow the boy to see all those memories of Lily that he'd passed along with Albus' last-minute instructions, but... he'd _thought_ that he was dying. He'd found himself facing his last moments in that shack with nothing of any great value to account for his whole life.

He'd seen... _pity..._ in those green eyes. He'd seen anger. Hatred. Dislike. Distrust... He'd seen _nothing_ but the very worst emotions that a man could hope to inspire and he'd wanted...

He'd _wanted_ to show those eyes that he'd been... _worth_ _it._ At least at one point in his life. He had wanted to convey the fact that he'd... He'd been _loyal_ in his own way. That he'd _loved,_ also in his own way, and that he'd _cared..._ even if he'd done it harshly...

He'd _known_ that once he was gone no one else would be left to remember his precious Lily, not in the same way that he could... He'd wanted to _save_ those unique memories, the most beautiful things that he'd ever possessed, from the ghastly fate that he himself had been facing.

He'd _entrusted_ his treasures to the boy in desperation, certain that they'll find shelter with him, that he'll value them and protect them with the care that they deserved...

Of course he'd never _imagined_ that he was meant to survive. Or that he'd be _pardoned_ the unforgivable acts that he'd committed. Or that the boy would have... _discovered..._ within those memories something about Severus himself that, somehow, convinced him that his old ex-teacher was worth all of... _this._

That he was worthy of all the time that the auror seemed to have spent trying to cure him. Worthy of all the care that he was offered, in the simplest of ways, almost on a daily basis, like whenever the boy insisted in cooking his breakfast. Or making him popcorn. Or waiting, beyond patience itself, for Severus to stop reading at the book-shop...

Shaking his dark head, in an attempt to get rid of those thoughts, he walked out of the bathroom and glanced at the clock. It was late already. He had spent far too long in the shower and now found himself in the position of having to rush through his preparations.

He was glad, though. For the need to get on with his grooming didn't allow him time enough to worry too much about the coming ordeal.

He studied the robes that hung from his wardrobe, focusing intently on the uniform mass of black cloth that stretched before him in order to make the most appropriate selection.

He was nervous enough as it was and he _refused_ to let that show in any way. He needed his armor to be _fitting_ for the momentous occasion: He had _returned._

He was going to stand there, in front of the whole student body, and allow them all to see... _him._

He might not have wanted the Headmaster's position, but Albus... _Albus_ had given it to him, despite it all and he'd be dammed before he _allowed_ that crazy old man to look like a fool in the eyes of anyone.

It was important then that he looked the part. His hand settled over a robe that he'd never worn before. It had been a gift. The last thing that Albus had ever given to him... and it was only now, as he stood in the silent room with the beautiful dark garment in his arms, that he finally understood why it looked so... normal.

He'd received gifts from the old man before. Ridiculous orange socks and even a purple hat. Everything that he'd ever gotten from that particular source had been... _garish_ in the most distressing way possible. So much so that, although he'd treasured them all, he'd never even _bothered_ to unwrap them.

_This_ robe had been the exception. He had taken it right out of it's plastic covering at once, searching for the hidden design that he'd been convinced must be there. He remembered that Albus had laughed at him. Smiling gently, the old man had told him something that he'd forgotten until now:

"One day, Severus, you'll put these on and think fondly of me. You won't have to play the role of a bumbling, forgetful old man, though. So I thought that formal dark velvet would become a far more befitting armor for you, child. I'll be looking over you from somewhere, I'm sure, and I will be so proud of you...

You've been like a son to me, my boy. You'll take them all were I tried to lead, wont you?. You'll continue with our work and you'll finish what we've started... I know you _will._ But you must _remember_ to do so just as you are, Severus. Don't ever listen to anyone who tries to compare the two of us. We are not the same man. And we _both_ can be right, without the other having to be necessarily wrong, don't you see?... There's a time to bumble along and there's also a time to get serious. You'll be perfect, Severus. You'll excel and you'll do so just the way you are..."

The memory made him shiver and he stood there, dark eyes filled with pained longing for the friend that he'd _murdered_ in cold blood.

"How can I be perfect as I am, Albus?. I won't be able to fill your shoes, old man... Not now that there's peace."

His words echoed around him before sinking into silence. There was no one here to answer him, no one to reassure him or to disagree with him...

He could always run away. Hide, like a coward, somewhere far away and save himself the trouble of spending the rest of his life tethered to the school. He could leave the whole mess behind him while there was still time. He could just... disappear...

Minnie would be able to take over if he showed himself to be so utterly untrustworthy, wouldn't she?. The castle wouldn't want to hold out for him then, why should it?.

And Potter... Did he truly _believe_ that Potter would _harm_ Draco?.

No. No. He had started to realize that the auror had indeed tricked him completely. He'd been had. Truly had. By a gryffindor, no less...

But the vow... the _vow_ was another matter entirely. It was a magical contract in itself and those tended to be... remarkably tricky, in the best of circumstances.

He'd sworn the thing on his godson's life. He could not risk Draco's very existence on the off chance that he might never have to face the consequences of his actions. He was not at all prepared to live with the kind of guilt that he'd end up carrying around, if he risked it and lost. Not when it came to his precious godson...

So he dressed in those dark robes with a heavy heart. He combed his long black hair. Found a pair of socks, his trusty high-collared white shirt, his heavy old boots... and slowly armored himself. Hemmed himself in. Sealed his whole future...

He abandoned his chambers and walked: slowly, determinedly and with a sickened sense of foreboding, along the empty corridors. He walked inexorably downwards, towards the Great Hall of Hogwarts.

It took him less than he'd expected and he stood for a long time with his blank eyes fixed on those huge closed doors.

After a while most portrait subjects began to gather in the paintings that where hung along the hall to gape at him, to whisper...

He felt rooted to the spot. Cold, like a sculpture made out of thin ice, and absolutely petrified.

It was then that he heard it, that one voice that he'd missed the most in this utterly bizarre moment of his life:

"Severus, my boy... I'm here!"

His head snapped towards the sound, black eyes searching the paintings for the white bearded mentor whom he'd destroyed...

"Albus!... Albus, I _can't_ do _this!_"

Albus' portrait pushed a few old ladies aside in order to come to the foreground of the painting that he'd hijacked. Bright blue eyes twinkled slightly behind the familiar half-moon spectacles that he used to wear while he'd been alive.

There was a small smile, rueful, but also loving in that old face. The white, long beard could do nothing to hide it from the slytherin's gaze.

"Of course you can, Severus!. They are all _waiting_ for you and _look _at you... I _told_ you that those robes would be _perfect,_ didn't I?. You couldn't be more right for this school unless you were made to order, my boy. There's nothing to _fear_ here, you'll be _fine_. Just... open the door, Severus. Open the door and join the rest of your life, child..."

He swallowed uneasily. The huge lump that was lodged in the middle of his throat was refusing to move a single inch. His resigned sigh ended up sounding like a pathetic, little whimper of sheer terror and his hands trembled as he attempted to grasp the doorknob. He took a very deep breath and decided to trust this old man who'd... loved him. Dearly. When it counted...

"I'll do this for _you_, Albus..."

The painting smiled brightly at him.

"And I'll look over you, my boy. I'll be glowing with pride while I do that, too. _This_ is where you should be. Whom you need to become. This is where the life that you've lived so far has been trying to lead you and, now that you are finally here, I couldn't be happier if I tried, Severus!"

The door gave under his fingers at that moment, robbing him of the opportunity to respond. Blinding light flooded his senses with the power of about a thousand candles and he could hear not a word as he stood there, blinking dazedly while he waited for his dark eyes to adjust to the bright light.

That was when he heard Minnie speak. Her voice was firm and warm. Welcoming.

"As I am sure that you've already heard: someone very special to us all decided to pay a visit to the school this afternoon. I believe that he'll be _ready_ to resume normal duties starting this coming Friday. For now, though, he is still recovering. He's a welcome visitor among us. A dear friend who has finally found his way home.

Student's of Hogwarts: I'm delighted to be finally able to present to you, Headmaster Severus Snape!"

His frame froze by the doorway, startled eyes focusing on his deputy with a sudden sense of abject panic.

She had dragged every eye towards him now. Every person, every ghost, every painted gaze was riveted on him and he... he felt as if he'd throw up at any second.

The first clap sounded like a loud explosion. His head turned towards the sound and his breath halted. Students were starting to rise along the tables: one by one they stood and... _clapped,_ while their eyes remained fixed upon him...

He began to walk then. Taking one small step after another, being barely able to swallow or even breathe. His whole throat was tight with emotion...

He felt _humbled._ _Overwhelmed,_ and truly... _floored._ He did not believe himself to be _deserving_ of this show of... _acceptance_. But he was _receiving_ it now and he wasn't about to _reject_ it.

By the time he reached the high table he was shaking like a leaf.

The Great Hall was, literally, reverberating with thunderous clapping. Every student, every teacher, every portrait and every ghost had come to a respectful stand and he looked at them all. Truly _looked._

His dark eyes filled with a veritable flood of burning tears and his aching chest contracted, when he finally realized that what he saw on every face was nothing short of welcome. He was _here!._ He was _home._ He had found... true _acceptance. A_t last!.

TBC...


	26. Chapter 26

_**The voice under all silences. Chapter 26**_

The door opened for him without resistance and that alone alarmed him instinctively.

He was unused to being granted entrance anywhere without having to prove himself first, in one way or another.

Potter though... Potter seemed to be the one exception to the rule that defined his every interaction with other people. Even Albus had demanded a Wizard's Vow from him before giving him his chance and Luc... Luc had taken true dedication before he'd allowed himself to be convinced of the fact that a half-blood, _any half-blood_, was actually worthy of his lofty attention.

It had been always that way. Always!. Until Draco... but his godchild had been a baby and he'd cared not about Severus' bloodline, or his allegiance in a war that he had no idea was even being fought.

Draco had never seemed to be aware of his physical failings or his terrible temper. Nor had he ever been bothered by the fact that Severus's tongue could be lethally cutting when displeased...

His boy had just... given him his love, his trust and his devotion without any kind of previous negotiations and now _Potter_ was apparently trying to show him that others, _adult_ _others_, could be equally willing to show him the same kind of trust without all that soul-destroying _begging..._

Potter had distrusted him always on principle as a child, but the boy had been following Severus' own cues. Responding, with defensive dislike, to a man who'd despised him openly.

He crossed the threshold to the gryffindor's chambers, wondering what life would have been like for all of them, if he'd been less _hostile_ to Lily's child from the beginning...

But regretting the past would not change it. Not in the slightest... and he seriously doubted that he could have shown more _tolerance_ towards the boy, anyway.

It was odd... to look back now and realize, maybe for the very first time, that he might have been _wrong_ all along. That his reactions to the child had probably been unjust. That he'd allowed his old grudges against the father, his deep guilt about the mother, to color his every interaction with the youth that their union had produced.

Sighing tiredly he allowed the door to close behind him and stood there, utterly transfixed.

_This_ was the kind of place where he could imagine someone as _intense _as Potter living. _This_ had that man's vibrant personality plastered over every surface. On every single item that lay, carelessly abandoned, all over the place...

There were tables everywhere, covered with a mind-boggling number of _books._ There were quills and parchment all over the floor. There were at least three coffee mugs piled up on a small sink, just under a window that overlooked the Quidditch pitch...

There was a moody print of a lonely, rain-washed cliff occupying the far wall and a veritable maze of framed pictures on the mantel of the cold and empty fireplace.

There was laundry that looked to be both clean and dirty, piled into richly colored mounds by the small breakfast table. There was a map of England by the fridge, certain spots crossed out with red ink. There was a transparent surface that somehow reminded him of a classroom blackboard, tainted with the horror that was Potter's infernal scrawl scratched over a truly dizzying array of little arrows that connected the lines of text to one another. There was a pensive, too...

He stepped further into these chambers and felt something strange wash swiftly over him. It took that confusing sensation of fondness, of warmth and comforting welcome, for him to realize that he'd crossed some seriously strong wards. Wards that had been set away from the doorway itself... wards that hadn't halted his progress either.

So... Potter was a bit paranoid about security, it seemed. He wondered why...

_This_ did not fit at all with his own pre-conceived ideas about the auror: He was young. He was famous. He was good looking to the point of irritation and yet... he had a bachelor pad meant for nothing but... _indulgence,_ while he'd _chosen_ to _live_ his day to day life within the awfully constricting atmosphere of a children's boarding school. It made no sense whatsoever...

_Why_ would the Head of the Auror Department decide to live in a room at Hogwarts, for Merlin's sake? Didn't he still have that awful monstrosity of a house that Black had left him? Didn't he earn enough to buy his own place? Or was there some element of... _escapism..._ associated to this choice?...

He shuddered with the thought. _Fame..._ Potter could have been attempting to find shelter from all the media attention that followed him wherever he went...

And now... now Severus himself faced the very same prospect, if his godson's allegations were to be believed. They must be true, of course. They had to be. How could he explain the student's overwhelmingly _friendly_ reaction to his presence in the castle, otherwise?.

He'd been given an _ovation,_ for Salazar's sake!. The mere memory still brought him more befuddled surprise than pleasure. It had been so _unexpected._ So _undeserved._ So... truly _humbling..._

He reached the middle of the small sitting room and stood there. Uncomfortably conscious of the fact that he was here: _alone_ in someone else's dwelling, invading a territory that did not belong to him in any way.

He detested the feeling. It brought tiny goosebumps to the skin of his arms and he knew not how to come to terms with the horrifying _intimacy_ of it all.

There were items that belonged to Potter on the sofa. The chairs were about to break under the weight of the various things that seemed to have been distractedly abandoned on top of them...

The whole place was truly a pigsty. It spoke either of a busy lifestyle, an extremely disorganized mind, or of a sudden, unexpected upheaval in the ordinary existence of it's owner... Severus couldn't really decide which one of those options was the most accurate, but he was... _disinclined..._ to remove the auror's belongings from their perch in order to sit himself down, lest he managed to disturb something that was important to the man.

Unable to decide what to do he started to walk around, aimlessly. He was tired, but the excitement of the day still buzzed through his mind, making him feel too restless to settle down for the night.

He wondered if a small cup of warm milk would help him settle, but a sweeping glance around the room revealed the absence of a pantry of any kind. There was alcohol in a corner, though. A lot of it. He shuddered at the sight and shied away from that worrying display. Wondering all the while what, exactly, about his own life _bothered_ that boy so much that he felt the need to _drown it_ quite so thoroughly...

The fireplace suddenly flared into life and it startled him so badly that he jumped.

He whirled anxiously around, hand extended forwards to grab the first heavy object that his fingers encountered, just as his gaze settled on the pair of amused green eyes that were staring straight at him from the fireplace.

"I haven't yet started to annoy you enough for you to grab my photography stand and point it at me so threateningly, Severus!"

He looked down at the odd thing in his hand, ignoring the humorous comment for the moment. His hands itched to keep this... _stand..._ clutched rigidly in his fingers, even as he forced himself to return it to the table.

"I didn't realize that it was you. It could have been any one of your _acquaintances,_ calling in to speak to you. I wasn't sure about how _favorably_ anyone might have reacted to finding _me_ here, instead of _you!_"

On the other side of the fire Potter seemed to have sat himself comfortably. His whole frame had lowered somehow and now green-tinged friendliness filled the face within the flames.

"None of my friends will harm you, Severus. The wards I've got on the place wouldn't let them, anyway"

They looked at each other uncomfortably for a second or two. He was _uncertain_ as to how to behave in this situation. His tongue seemed to have frozen with a crippling kind of... _shyness _and he found himself unable to utter a single word before this man who'd been inside his head. Who'd _pursued_ him through half of London before _corralling_ him mercilessly, and then had proceed to _force him_ into an unwanted confrontation over that kiss that they had shared...

Had Potter really been intending to... _touch him_... in that manner again?. Or had he simply _imagined_ the danger and just... _spooked_ himself with the mere possibility?. Why on Earth would the boy even want to... _repeat_ such a thing?. And with _him,_ of all people... It made no sense at all.

He, who looked like the shadow of a Dementor, couldn't have managed to inspire genuine desire in a man like this one... Not really. Definitely not without the need to bring him out of another bout of hysteria...

Potter must have been trying to bring their faces together so that he could look him in the eye in a more threatening way. They'd been arguing, after all...

And he'd _thought_ that the auror had been trying _to_... dear Salazar, he was an utter idiot!.

The idea that he had... _overreacted_... in the most ridiculous manner flitted through his mind and he felt faint with sheer embarrassment. Color blossomed along his cheekbones and his eyes, dark and utterly

mortified, lowered towards the floor.

"Severus?. Are you all right?. You look a bit... _stressed_"

"I'm merely tired, Mr. Potter. It has been a very long day." His reply was firm, but clearly only half of the whole truth. It was immediately apparent that the gryffindor saw through him.

The green eyes narrowed thoughtfully and that intense gaze became alive with a speculative kind of focus.

"I thought you'd be happier. With all your colleagues there you must have spent the afternoon chatting away... Was it really that much of an ordeal to go back home, Severus?"

He could not shake the feeling that they were having a conversation that didn't belong to people such as them. Exchanging his thoughts and emotions with another was not something he did regularly. Or even rarely. He tended to be... _circumspect,_ to the point of crippling reserve, about his day to day activities and thoughts.

Luc had always accused him of discouraging new friendships with his attitude, but... It was not something that he could simply turn on, or off, at will. He was just... extremely _shy._ And... _distrustful._ Maybe even plain, old fashioned, _misanthropic..._

People kept away from him and he was happy enough with that attitude. It made things easier, somehow. He actually _liked_ the fact that he did not have to _navigate_ through a million uncertainties every time that he opened his mouth. Or squirm uncomfortably in the presence of another while he waited, with a terrified sense of heart-pounding humiliation, for the moment when they'd decide not to _bother_ with him any longer...

This _attempt_ at an end-of-the-day-sort-of-conversation was a new and unnerving experience. It smacked him of the kind of _domesticity_ that he'd seen so often between Luc and Cissy.

He'd _never_ had anyone who'd _bothered_ to ask him about his afternoon...

"I haven't yet decided how I feel about this evening, if you must know" He finally offered that answer guardedly, unable to decide if he was happy or not with this strange and utterly unexpected shift in the nature of their... _friendship._

Potter frowned at him. A hand rose, wide and apparently nervous, to dig trenches on the wilderness that was the boy's mad mop of hair.

"Why?. Was anyone rude to you?"

Dark eyes shone with a puzzled kind of confusion. He finally decided to approach the fireplace slowly. Just two steps, though. Not too close...

"Why should you _care_ if they were, Mr. Potter?. You are not my... _personal_ _shield..._ against the world"

Potter laughed, somewhat bitterly. Bright green eyes alive with something very much like longing.

"I'd love to be, though. Not that I think you'd let me, but... If wishes were horses I'd have had to move into a stable a long time ago"

He was floored by the oddness of that statement, by the soft and yearning tone with which it had been pronounced. He wasn't certain of what was going on. Was his mind playing nasty tricks on him or was the boy actually _implying _that he had a... _craving..._ for some sort of further _closeness_ between them?.

"Is it true that Lupin died?" He asked the question abruptly, with a point-blank sort of bluntness that made the boy clearly flinch.

"You didn't know for sure?. I keep forgetting that your memory of the battle only extends as far as that horrible scene in the shack. I can give you a fast run-down of event's, if you want, Severus. I could tell you who survived and who didn't. What everyone's up to nowadays... that sort of thing"

The mere idea sickened him totally. He had no desire to return to those memories. Not unless he had to. He'd been _submerged_ up to the neck in the bloody war and the last thing he wanted was to be forced to _talk a_bout _it._

"I'd rather not, if you don't mind" He responded a bit too forcefully. His horrified dark eyes had opened wide in absolute rejection of the idea and the boy frowned with obvious discontent. A sigh forced the dancing flames into a wild flutter, for a second or two, before the boy's puzzled answer reached his ears.

"_You_ were the one to bring Remus up, Severus. I _thought_ that you were feeling bad about not knowing what happened. I was trying to _help_ you, for Godric's sake!"

He held tightly onto his temper. Reminding himself firmly that the boy hadn't done anything to offend him, in any way. It was _not_ the auror's fault that Severus's own point had been too oblique for a Gryffindor's mind.

"I was not expressing a desire to find out the nitty-gritty of the final battle, Mr. Potter. I was attempting to ascertain the current lack of... _paternal_ _influence_ in your life, and actually _insinuating_ that I am a rather _uninspired_ choice for a stand-in"

Potter seemed to have been shocked right out of his little funk. He blinked owlishly at him for so long that Severus began to think he'd rendered the _Savior of the Wizarding World _dumb.

Laughter exploded suddenly from the fireplace. Cold, heartbroken laughter.

"You think that I want you to be my... second-hand _father_?. Who do you take me for, Severus?. I kissed you. _KISSED YOU!._ With _tongue_, for Merlin's sake!.

I tried to _do_ it all over again, just this afternoon. What part of all _that_ did you _miss_?. I thought that's what made you _run_ _away_ in the first place!"

He'd turned to stone right were he stood. There must be something _wrong_ with his hearing. It was either that or the child had _lost_ _his_ _marbles_ and was spouting disconcertingly unconnected words out into the Ether...

He decided to _ignore_ altogether the most contentious _aspect_ of that little rant and addressed that last comment instead:

"I did not _run away_, as you so charmingly put it, Mr. Potter!. I _apparated _myself _accidentally_"

That green gaze stabbed him with the most pointed look that the human eye can produce:

"No, Severus. You did _not_ apparate yourself accidentally. You _wished_ yourself away from me. As far away as you could possibly go and still remain in The United Kingdom, actually.

You did _that_ because you'd rather _die_ than accept another kiss from me. I get it, all right?. There's no need to sugar-coat the obvious. I made the pass too soon and now you've gone ahead and returned to shying away from me and giving me little suspicious looks every time that we are in the same room together"

He felt faint with alarmed shock. He'd been brutally jolted out of his every perception of those very same events by the boy's... frighteningly _bizarre_ account.

His throat spasmed with perfect inability to produce a single sound and his brain just... _froze_.

He felt... _odd_. He was... _distressed_. He feared that he'd kneel over and _die_, unless he managed to _breathe_ in the next few seconds...

His legs finally gave and he collapsed to the floor, right where he'd stood.

Dark eyes fixed on Potter's as the boy remained there: face firmly entrenched within the flames. Not an hallucination, then...

There was a loud, strange roar in his ears. A fierce pounding of agitated blood within his veins. He felt _sick._ He was... _speechless._ He had _never_ been spoken to like this in his whole life...

"Severus?"

The boy called him, tone worried, and a sharp edge of hysterical recognition flitted through his mind. He _recognized_ the tone. He'd heard it about a hundred times before, but had never truly paid it any attention. This child... _Lily's_ _child_ had _developed_ some sort of _unhealthy_ _fixation _with _him..._

"I thought that unfortunate kiss we shared had been an... act of _mercy..._ on your part, Auror Potter. I was in need of a shock and you... you provided me with the most effective one that you could have possibly produced...

I am deeply sorry if my _subsequent behavior_ led you to the belief that I was attempting to cast..._ aspersions..._ on your much boasted about _prowess._ That was never my intention. You need not prove me wrong, you see?. There's absolutely no reason why you should _convince_ yourself that you feel a desire to... _repeat_... that kiss, in any shape or form"

The boy was pale. And hurt to his very soul, by the look of him. There were tears in those eyes and forced as he was, by his position on the floor, to look straight into them, Severus' throat convulsed wildly and he swallowed repeatedly.

"I don't kiss people out of pity, Severus!. I could have _slapped_ you out of that funk of yours, if I'd wanted to, and have done away with the whole situation. I'm sure you'd have stopped laughing long enough to try and throttle me, at the very least.

I saw an _opportunity a_nd I _took_ _it._ It was a bad call on my part, I admit that. It was too _much._ Too _soon._ And, probably, too _intimate_ for you at the moment in every possible way...

I was too _impatient _and now we have gone back to the beginning. I just... I don't _want_ you to grab onto this new _excuse_ of yours, about me being some kind of good Samaritan that was trying to help you out of a tight spot.

I was a right selfish bastard, OK?. I wanted to kiss you and I did. I wanted to _do_ far more than kiss you. I'm not letting you _invent_ some convincing little _lie_ to hide behind, Severus. Not with _this!._

I_ DESIRE _YOU. _Sexually._ All right?. I... I'd be _ecstatic_ to take you to bed at any time that you feel like allowing me to do so..."

The whole of Hogwarts could have crashed down to the ground and then _sink,_ beneath the soil, never to be found again, and Severus wouldn't have cared at that moment.

He had never, not _ever_ in the whole of his life, been on the receiving end a _sexual_ _proposition_. Never mind one as blatantly obvious as this one had been and coming from Potter, no less! _POTTER..._ The Saviour of the Wizarding World, himself. James Potter's son...

Dear Merlin!. _This_ could not possibly be _happening_ to him!. Not at all. Not in any way. Definitely not in _real_ _life_...

Had he been more tired than he'd thought and fallen asleep on the couch?. Was he, even now, lost in the throes of this... inexplicably vivid _nightmare,_ attempting to convince himself to just... _wake up?._

Had Potter's kiss _perturbed_ him so much that he'd proceeded to... _invent_ this whole scenario in order to... take the experience even _further?..._

He knew that he'd been _thinking_ about it since it happened. Pondered on the whys, the hows, and what might be the best way to react to the whole thing. The best way to protect himself from the embarrassing acknowledgement of it having ever happened, but for his _subconscious_ _mind_ to go to this level of... _subterfuge..._ it was just too mind-boggling to be sane.

"I'd like to wake up now. Please..." He whispered quietly into the thick, tense silence.

From the fireplace, Potter sighed with heartfelt annoyance.

"Come on, Severus!. You can do better than _this._ I don't _deserve_ to be put through that nightmare _thing_ of yours _again!_"

Affronted perplexity descended over his senses. This could _not_ be happening!. It. Just. Could. Not. Be,

but then wouldn't a _conjured_ Potter be less... well, _Potterish?._

"I don't see what you've got to complain about. This is my bloody delusion, boy!. I get to decide when I want to send you packing and you are supposed to _disappear_ in a _puff_ of... _ash_ or... _whatever._

Those green eyes clashed with his own with the stubbornness of a dragon.

"I'm not a _delusion,_ Severus. You've got to stop playing that stupid game every time that you don't like the turn of a conversation!

He felt wronged by the sheer _disrespect_ contained in that frustrated statement.

"I'm not the one playing games here, Potter!. And we were not just having any old conversation. You were attempting to convince me that you... you... want to... _cavort... _with me"

The auror's eyebrows shot up as high as they could go and still remain firmly planted on that furrowed forehead.

"Cavort?... You make it sound as if we'll find a patch of grass and roll around on it all afternoon long, like a pair of puppies. _Why_ is it so hard for you to get this into your head, Severus?. It is not so complicated. I'm pretty sure that you've heard it all before, but let me say it even more plainly for you now. Just to make sure that you don't accuse me in the future of not having been clear enough:

I want to throw you down on to a bed, or a sofa, or the floor, and _take_ _you._ _Penetrate_ you. _Fornicate_ with you. Procreate, have sex, screw the living lights out of you... and whatever other euphemism for the sexual act between two adults you can come up with once you decide to put that brilliant mind of yours to good use, OK?"

Hot color engulfed his whole face as he sat there and... _stared..._ straight into those flames as if petrified. His mind shorted and he couldn't have moved a muscle to save his sorry life, had it actually been in danger.

"I... You... No. NO!_._ I don't know what game you are playing here, Potter, but I'm done with all this _nonsense!_" He jumped to his feet as if poked with a rod and turned his stiffened back around, searching blindly for a door of some kind. A escape route that would allow him to... _abandon..._ this ridiculous conversation before he'd ended up throttling the child.

He had barely moved an inch when Potter's frosty tone nailed him to the spot:

"If you so much as _take_ another step away, Severus Snape, I swear to you that I'll cross over there RIGHT NOW and _tie_ _you_ to a chair, until we have this out to my complete satisfaction!"

He turned back to the brat. Black eyes wide with panicked anxiety.

"I do not _wish_ to listen to this _drivel!_" He snarled defensively, pale face rigid with absolute rejection of the whole topic. "You can't have a conversation such as this one when one of the parties involved in the discussion has no wish to be... _approached_, Potter!"

Silence settled between them like the headstone over a grave: heavy and mournful and utterly, _utterly_, heartbroken. It must have been the single most eternal second of Severus' entire life.

Then the brat sighed with crestfallen uncertainty.

"Why, though?. _Why_ don't you wish to be approached?. Is it because I'm a man or is it because I'm _me?"_

"I have been attracted to men before, if that is what you are asking, Mr. Potter. That was a very long time ago, though, while I was still a student. Not that it's any business of yours, of course, but... it would be beyond hypocritical of me to even consider _insinuating_ that I'm rejecting your very flattering._.._ _proposition._.. out of simple homophobia"

Surprisingly the boy's visage turned even paler and those green eyes became twin reflexions of polished emerald heartbreak.

"It's because is me, then. Isn't it?. Is the idea of becoming involved with _me_ that... _disgusting... _to you?"

He floundered under the sheer strength of the incredulous _disbelief_ that such a crazy question managed to arouse within his chest. His throat closed and his breath hitched. His eyes burned with humiliation.

"How can you even _ask_ that question?. Regardless of what else is obviously wrong with the whole ridiculous idea... have you actually _looked_ at yourself recently?. On a mirror?"

Potter frowned, beautiful emerald eyes becoming increasingly more disconcerted by the second.

"Why?. I have it on good authority that I don't look so bad, you know?. The hair is all wrong, I agree, but... no one's ever complained that I make their eyes _bleed_ or something!"

The awful, hot, bitter-tasting bile that rose to the back of his throat then should have poisoned him on the spot, if it was indeed true that there were loving Gods up there, only... it didn't and he was forced to answer his own figurative question in this: the most _degrading_ moment of his life.

"I have been, though, Mr. Potter. Accused of making people's eyes _bleed_ with my unbearable _ugliness, _that is. I have been... _described_ in painfully punctilious detail many times. I am in no doubt whatsoever about my many physical... _failings._

I see no reason why a man such as yourself who by his own admission has enjoyed the attentions of _millions,_ should decide completely out of the blue that he finds _me_ desirable.

I will not be _mocked_ by you!. Not in this manner. And I will not be yours, either. Not in order to become the _ugly_ _notch_ that you scored out of _sexual_ _ennui!_"

The auror seemed to have been left utterly speechless. He had paled and was now... _gaping._ Those green eyes were staring straight at him with a baffled and disconcertingly _confused_ expression.

"You think you are too ugly for sex?. Severus, that's absolutely _insane!._ From all the bloody excuses that I've ever imagined you using to shoot me down with, this one wasn't even on the cards!"

His shoulders shook with the effort to remain in position. He wished to leave the room, abandon the whole irksome conversation. Seek refuge, somewhere truly inaccessible to the little menace, and _attempt_ to _forget_ the last half hour of his life...

But the threat the boy had made hovered over him. If the whole ghastly situation was uncomfortable enough to make him grit his teeth, when discussed through the floo, he couldn't even imagine the horror of being forced to... _endure it_ while the brat was in the room.

"Then your thought process must have been even more ridiculous than I feared, Mr. Potter!.

When have I, _ever,_ given you the impression that I'd... _welcome... _this kind of advance?. From you, no less... Have you lost all _sense,_ child?. I was your _teacher._ I'm old enough to be your _father._ I have no interest whatsoever in having some kind of... _sleazy assignation_ with you!"

That last sentence rang in the dreadful silence that followed.

The fire crackled. Dancing flames waved in agitated little patters within the hearth as Potter's gaze filled steadily with something so akin to turbulent indignation that Severus felt like flinching.

"Calling it _sleazy_ is a bit... _unkind,_ Severus. I was expecting the other two, though. So here is my answer to those: yes, you were my teacher, but _that_ was about a million years ago. I've grown up. I'm not at school anymore and I can go ahead and get involved with as many former teachers of mine as I want to, now that that one is done lets talk about your age for a sec, shall we?"

"Potter... This whole exercise will lead you absolutely nowhere!. Why don't you quit, while you are still ahead, and go search for a far more _appropriate_ recipient to your... _advances?"_

The boy proceeded to ignore him regally. Wild dark head turned to the side as it's owner studied him thoughtfully through those terrifyingly intense emerald eyes.

"You could sit, you know?. The couch won't bite you, Severus"

Black eyes followed the minute motion of the brat's head towards the sofa and he rubbed the long bridge of his own nose in disturbed agitation. He did not _want_ to sit there, he did not want to do _anything_ that might _prolong_ this uncomfortable exchange.

"I am tired and I don't see the point in continuing with this discussion. I want you to... _desist..._ from pursuing this topic!"

The gryffindor sighed then. The sound was heartbroken and wounded. He looked ready to fall apart with his next blink and it was so strange... to be aware that he, himself, had caused that reaction. He'd never had reason to reject sexual advances before. Not ever.

This felt... _horrible..._ It felt _wrong_. It left him filled, almost to bursting point, with a kind of wretched regret that seemed to have lodged itself inside his throat.

He could not look at the boy in the eye. He could not move towards that coach either. He could only remain were he stood, paralyzed like a statue and silent like the grave, while his heart fairly pounded and his breath hitched loudly...

"Do not fret so badly about this, Severus. I _knew_ you'd balk at first. It's not so unexpected to hear you tell me to go get lost in some jungle, far, _far_ away.

What surprises me is the lack of glee that you are showing. I was expecting... _viciousness_, really. You have me at your mercy here. I... I've come begging for attention and you could have been... truly savage"

Black eyes widened with a new and horrified understanding.

"You haven't had enough _humiliation_?. Is that what this is about?. Do you _enjoy_ being... _vituperated_, Potter?. Are you some kind of... _sexual masochist_?"

The boy laughed. Bitter notes that were not even half amused spilled forth from within the dancing fire.

"_Vituperated?_... What a strange word to use in a sexual context, Severus. No. I do not _enjoy_ being treated harshly by my partners, nor do I usually treat them with anything other than... _passionate enthusiasm_, in case that you were wondering.

I'm only saying that you looked wretched there for a second, truly saddened and I couldn't understand why hurting _my_ _feelings_ in this matter would affect you so much. Not unless you care about me in some small way"

He was shocked at the auror's doggedness.

"Maybe I've suffered enough rejection myself not to take the matter lightly, Mr. Potter. It doesn't have anything whatsoever to do with my... feelings, or lack of them, towards you!"

A chuckle reached him then. It was a low and gentle sound, almost too soft.

"I _knew_ there was compassion inside you, somewhere... I'm just surprised to have encountered it this early on"

He sat down then. The motion jerky and, in a way, almost defeated. His stiffened frame perched delicately on the very corner of the messy couch and he directed an absolutely mystified look towards the fireplace.

"I can't decide if you are having me on or your skin is really thicker than a rhino's!"

A smile curved those soft lips.

"I'm trying not to spook you. I've rushed this so _badly_... haven't I?. I was trying for suave, you see?.

I wanted it to be slow and courteous and kind of... old fashioned, you know?. I was _trying_ to be a gentleman, but... you don't get my subtle moves very well and I... I seem to lose my plot and panic _too_ _much_ to keep to the plan, so... we'll have to deal with things as they are"

Startled dark eyes zeroed on the boy's.

"Are you _implying_ that you... you were planning to _seduce..._ _ME?_" He knew that his voice sounded unusually harsh, but the sheer incredulity that was rushing through his veins made it impossible for him to curtail the strength of his reactions.

"You took me to that... _detestable_ flat of yours on purpose?. What were you _thinking_, Potter?. That I'd take one single look at that distasteful little sex-nest of yours and spread my legs for your enjoyment with eager enthusiasm?. I am _not_ a _slut!_"

He literally growled those words. He was so offended that his hands curled into a pair of truly impressive white-knuckled fists. He was _shaking_ with rage from head to toes. He could have _punched_ the living daylights out of the little _bastard_, if he'd been actually in the room.

Potter looked ready to scream. His eyes shone fiercely enough to burn the flames themselves and his strong jaw was gritted with anger.

"Don't be ridiculous, Severus!. You were _never_ meant to _know_ that the place even _existed_. You were meant to come _here,_ to Hogwarts, from the very beginning. _This_ is where we actually brought you. You were recovering upstairs, in the infirmary, when that vow wrecked it all!.

Once that shield on your arm proved to be _adversely affected_ by magic, it became clear to us that you could not be brought back _here_. I had no other option but to arrange for you to go there. How do you think I felt, Eh?.

I spent _YEARS_ setting your old chambers back to rights. I was aiming to impress you with my

_thoughtfulness_, for Godric's sake!. Everything was going to be _absolutely bloody perfect,_ and then... Gosh... _NOTHING_ went as planned!.

I miscalculated the effects of the Felix Felicis. Then I went ahead and took advantage of it, anyway, instead of doing the right thing and... _confessing_ on the spot.

I bought myself some time, under the disguise of that stupid oath, while telling myself all along that you'd settle once you realized that I truly meant you no harm, only... You _fought_ me at every turn and I reacted like even more of a berk.

I wanted to look suave. To... _court_ you. And ended up giving you the impression that I'm some sort of... _heartless Casanova, _instead!_"_

He was so flummoxed that he could not even _blink!_. A Thunder-like roar had assaulted his ears, making him feel dizzy with discomfort.

His blood pounded in his veins and his lungs froze. He sat there: paralyzed. Mind abuzz with the increasingly louder echo of those words that he'd never expected to hear from this source. Or from any _source, _at all_. _Not really.

He could not begin to unravel his own reaction to this... utterly bizarre development.

"Court?..." That one term left his lips in a choked little whisper. He could not bring himself to believe that he'd heard it correctly. It could not be...

"Did you just say that you wanted to... _court_ _me_, Potter?. As in... _Romantic Courtship?... _The kind that ends in _MARRIAGE?"_

Potter didn't even flinch at his incredulous hiss. Those green eyes were calm and certain: they were glittering with the kind of conviction that could move entire mountains.

The boy was was smiling gently. Lovingly. _AT HIM!. _

And his voice, when he finally spoke, was deep and assured. Sincere... it proceeded to pronounce the most bizarre statement of them all in a soft and wishful whisper:

"I am in love with you, Severus. _IN LOVE!. _Of course I'd marry you, right now, if I thought you'd care to have_ me..."_

TBC...


	27. Chapter 27

**A/N: **This work was recently nominated for an Energize W.I.P. Award in the category "Most promising Harry Potter Fan Fiction". Although this story didn't win any actual prize I wanted to take a moment to thank all of you, who are reading, reviewing and obviously finding this story worthy of receiving that kind of attention. Every second that you spend reading a work of mine is a precious gift that you all give me. It was a true honor to receive that notification, and it only ever happened because of you all.

To those of you who read but don't review. To those of you who do review but do so anonymously, making it impossible for me to acknowledge your lovely comments directly, and let's not forget those of you who have already received some sort of answer from me about your thoughts on this story: I want to take this opportunity to thank you all, for everything.

_**THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 27**_

He knew not how to start this conversation.

He was so truly embarrassed that his cheeks felt like a furnace and his fingers were curled around the teacup that Luc had given him with all the rigidity of a crab's claw.

His friend was frowning at him. Pale gray eyes darkened with a worry that their owner was not even bothering to mask as the silence grew and grew. It pulsed with tension. With expectation. With the kind of... watchful energy... that only Luc himself could ever bring to such encounters.

Lucius Malfoy was the perfect interrogator: he was elegant and cold. He was patient. Curious. Clever... He had the kind of subtlety that always triumphed in the end, no matter how reluctant his _victim_. He always got his answer. Always!. And he was never particularly bothered by how long it might take him, either.

Luc _lived_ to find answers to his questions. To any questions. But, most particularly, to those that either intrigued him at an intellectual level or were related to someone that he cared deeply for...

"You must stop... _dithering..._ Severus. Either the tea is to your satisfaction or it is not. Holding the cup tightly enough to break my precious china for the grand total of three hours, without actually _bothering_ to take a single sip, is just... _rude!._ It's too much indecision for so small a choice. Either drink it or leave it, please. Then we can talk."

He blinked at his friend dejectedly and his hand deposited the cup onto a side table before returning slowly to his own lap, where it laid, like a limp, snow-colored ribbon, against the unrelenting darkness of his woolen black robe.

He knew that he was trembling from head to toe. He felt cold to his very bones. He was on the edge of a meltdown and he needed advice, sensible advice... He needed it _desperately._

_"_Draco fire-called yesterday evening, Severus. He said that you had apparated yourself to Hogwarts. Does _this_ have something to do with that, my friend?. Have you recovered your magic?"

He blinked dazedly in Luc's general direction. Heavy head processing the other man's words slowly. So very slowly... Too slowly.

"Severus?"

He heard the increasingly concerned note contained in Luc's sharp address, but couldn't find within his muddled thoughts the necessary words to express how much he needed his friend's... _help._

_He'd_ hardly slept at all and, when he'd finally managed to nod off, it was to have horrific nightmares of Lily. He'd dreamed that James Potter, together with the whole pack of marauders, had come back from the grave to hunt him down. They had _demanded,_ at the top of their inferius-like voices, that he leave Potter's boy alone. Stop _corrupting_ their precious child's mind, _desist _from ruining his whole life...

He'd woken covered in sweat. Heart pounding a mile a minute within the shrunken prison of his ribcage. He'd started to tremble then and had been forced to sit up hastily on the bed by a sense of impending _doom_ that would just... not leave him alone.

No matter how hard he tried to tell himself to ignore that ridiculous nightmare he hadn't managed to calm himself since...

He'd paced the auror's rooms like a caged bear until he'd finally spotted the floo powder. The decision that had finally brought him to the Manor had been instinctive, desperate. He _knew_ that Lucius could, and would, help him. He _knew_ that he wasn't the best judge of situations such as this one. Not really. He was woefully ill-prepared to understand what his own emotions meant under normal circumstances... There was no way on Earth that he could successfully try to understand the boy's.

"Severus, I want you to look me straight in the eye and tell me the first word that comes into your head"

He startled at the barked order. Ebony colored eyelashes fluttered wildly: unveiling and concealing their owner's distressed gaze in a painfully rhythmic pattern.

He swallowed the awfully tight knot of sheer tension that had lodged in his throat since that last surreal... _conversation..._ with Potter and his pale lips parted in a gasp that, literally, exhaled confusion.

"Potter..."

Luc went rigid in his chair.

"He's _done_ something to you?. He dared to... _punish_ you... for my refusal to let him get away with that disgusting little trick of his?. Is that why your magic reacted by apparating you to the school? _What_ has he _done_ to you, Severus?"

Hearing his childhood friend's enraged rant focused him somewhat and he was able to close his eyes for a few seconds. Attempting, in vain, to regain some form of self-control.

He understood that he was frightening Luc. He was actually frightening himself. He was _never_ this_ inarticulate. _Had never before flown head first into the manor, at the crack of dawn, no less, in search of what amounted to nothing short of... _comfort._

_"_Severus... You must answer me. Right _now!_"

He was so ashamed of his own thoughtless behavior that he actually flinched at Luc's dark tone. The aristocratic slytherin sighed before coming to a stand in order to cross the small distance that separated their two chairs. After a brief second of hesitation Luc knelt gingerly beside him, richly ringed fingers came to rest soothingly over the ice-cold hand that was curled on Severus' lap.

"If he has caused you harm I'll kill him, my friend!. No one shall ever find the body. _That_ I promise you, Severus"

"He... He... I don't even _know_ if I'll be _allowed_ to say this to you..."

Pale gray eyes narrowed intently on his ashen face. Rosy lips thinned with displeasure while soft, elegant hands cradled his own gently.

"Is this about the oath?"

His dark head shook in negation. Potion-tainted fingertips curled into Luc's own hand and held on tightly.

"It is about the boy, though"

Luc swallowed too thickly for the look of nonchalance that he was trying to portray and he could tell, without any effort at all, that his friend was desperately worried.

"I believe that oath of yours won't be able to... _punish..._ you severely. Not unless you try to break it. Potter never meant to hurt you with it, did he?. You'd be dead if he had...

You fought the vow itself when it was trying to take hold, didn't you, Severus?. It's the only explanation I could find that fits into what happened. You fought the magic and either he, himself, or Hogwarts must have tried to intervene on your behalf. You wouldn't be here, otherwise...

Whichever the case, the magic responded to his _intentions,_ so they must have been _friendly_.

I think you'll find that you can talk to me about the both of you, as long as what you say is not directly linked to the letter of the vow"

He swallowed with nerves and promptly choked on his own saliva. He started to cough almost convulsively, utterly unable to shield himself under the protective mantle of his shattered dignity. He felt ready to _die_ with the humiliation of _this._ He could not bear to look into Luc's eyes as his trembling lips finally managed the task of bringing to wavering life the bizarre words that had been circling his mind for hours.

"He said... he said he wants to _marry..._ _me!"_

The silence that followed his stark statement seemed to be plagued with the most disconcerting kind of... _volatile..._ energy.

He'd expected Luc to laugh so much and so harshly that he'd be returned to his senses with abrupt and brutal firmness. He wanted to have the reassuring opinion of just how utterly _ridiculous_ the whole concept truly was _hammered_ down on him, by the one man who wouldn't, _ever_, allow him to suffer the indignity of believing such lies... Not now. Not ever. And definitely not again...

He could not afford to be convinced of the fact that he'd managed to snare the... _romantic._.. regard of someone. Anyone. But specially not of Harry Potter...

"He said... _WHAT_?" Luc's voice was absolutely appalled with astonishment and Severus felt as if some merciless bastard had plunged him inside a grinder and _mashed_ him into a pulp, upon hearing that bewildered request for clarification. He could not possibly _repeat_ _it_. He could not bear to... look down into his friend's eyes and see them gazing up at him with... _pity._

"You _heard_ me!" He growled. He was beyond vexed with himself, with Luc and with Harry-Bloody-Potter for putting him through this whole ghastly ordeal, in the first place.

Luc squeezed his hand so harshly that he gasped and tried to pull his digits away, but he was held too firmly...

His bony wrist was encircled when he failed to look down. Then it was shaken with frustration, until he had no other option but to confront Luc's gray gaze.

"Stop that, for Merlin's sake!. I'm not your bloody rag-doll, Malfoy"

His friend ignored him altogether. Beautiful, aristocratic features were contracted into an expression of deep puzzlement, surprised frustration and vexed exasperation.

"_When_ did this happen, Severus?. _How_ did it happen?. I can't believe he told you _that!"_

"There's no need for you to believe any of it, anyway. He was obviously _lying_"

A golden eyebrow shot upwards, in that incredibly irritating, elegant little arch that all Malfoys are born knowing how to produce.

"Was he?"

"Of course he was!. He _must_ have been!. The whole claim is just... too _stupid_ to be believable!"

He could tell almost immediately that he'd managed to enrage Luc. Those richly ringed fingers abandoned his thin wrist and his friend rose in a jerky and exasperated motion that simply lacked the smooth grace with which the aristocratic slytherin usually moved.

There was a second of silence as the owner of the manor resumed his seat. Then those smoke colored eyes proceeded to drill into him with a kind of heartbroken sadness that brought a lump the size of Hogwarts to his achingly dry throat.

_"Why?._ Why is it stupid?. What, exactly, did that bloody _idiot_ say?"

Severus swallowed with difficulty. Ebony eyes lowered towards the floor in order to avoid eye-contact with his companion.

He had come here to have this conversation, for Merlin's sake. It didn't matter in the slightest that he really had no desire to... _endure_ it any further. He _had_ to. He _needed_ to hear Luc's opinion on this matter. He needed to listen to the perspective of someone who had been _awake_ every second of these last four years... Someone he trusted implicitly. Someone who'd steer him straight into safety without a second of doubt...

He needed to decide how he was going to respond to the boy when he finally showed up at the castle. Because Potter would show. Today, most probably... In fact he wouldn't be too surprised to find out that the bloody child was up in Scotland right now, searching those chambers of his for Severus' own presence.

"He... _implied..._ that he _loves_ me" The sentence escaped his reluctant, parched lips more like a wavering stutter than a firmly-voiced statement, but he couldn't do better at that moment. Not while he felt this exposed. This uncomfortable. This... _terrified_ of the bizarre situation that he was being, so mercilessly, _forced_ to live through.

Luc's surprised intake of breath was sharp and audible. It was shocked and frustrated all in one. It was utterly irritated.

"Forgive me if I sound too blunt for you, but I can't bring myself to agree with your opinion on this matter. The fact that someone has _finally_ showed enough good taste to actually love you is not stupid in any shape or form, Severus. I find it really _offensive_ that you'd dare to imply otherwise!"

He was so disconcerted at finding himself on the wrong side of that furiously barked remonstration that he jumped. Widened ebony eyes fixed with wounded surprise upon his friend's pale and exquisite visage.

"Excuse me?. I think I must have _heard_ you wrong."

Luc's lips thinned even further and he tapped a pointedly irritated index finger against the armrest of his chair.

"You've heard me just _fine,_ my friend. I had it with all this I'm-too-ugly-for-love nonsense that you like to throw around. It's absolute troll-shit and I won't listen to it for a single second longer!"

He gaped like a beached whale. He could do nothing but stare straight into those incensed gray eyes and... blink stupidly.

His mind felt numb with paralyzed shock and his tongue refused to shape a single word. He was rendered immobile, speechless and utterly dumb by the sheer _unexpectedness_ of the other man's rant...

Silence reigned supreme in the room for a long time. Both men gazed warily at each other as the strained seconds morphed into agonizingly tense minutes until, finally, it was Luc who broke the impasse.

"You need a drink, Severus. Trust me on this... I wish you'd let me pour a good dose of my best brandy down your throat. It'll do you much more good than a hundred cups of tea, but... we both know your _limitations._ Don't we, my friend?.

You'll have tea and you'll calm down. Only _then_ shall we attempt to have this conversation again, using far more patience than I've shown you this far... _That_ you definitely deserve and I shall strive to give it to you."

A snap of pale fingers brought a house elf to them and the order for the drinks was placed with a sharp, determined bark.

They sat facing one another in the wretched silence, staring into each other's eyes with unblinking focus. Severus felt deeply uncomfortable. Shortchanged by the fact that his friend, his loyal friend, had so inexplicably decided to turn against him when he needed him the most. He wondered what would happen now. How could he move past this _awful_ _need_ to be cautious around his host that he was beginning to experience, in order to... confide in the man.

"You are over-thinking this. You know that, don't you, Severus?. Just because I don't agree with you when you tell me that you are hideous, doesn't mean that you can't _trust_ me"

His face flamed with the horror of being so plainly transparent to those shrewd gray eyes.

"I thought we were waiting for the tea" He stalled for time, utterly discomfited with the topic.

Luc dared to shrug his wide, elegantly clad shoulders.

"Some things have to be nipped in the bud, my friend. Your doubts tend to be one of them. You do like to... _entrench..._ yourself. It's a very _unhelpful_ habit."

He was ruffled by the unwarranted criticism.

"So now I'm not only astonishingly beautiful to look at, but also quite unhelpful. I hope you are not expecting gratefulness from me for your _kind_ words"

"Oh, For Merlin's sake!. I did not call you astonishingly beautiful. Nor did I _imply_ that you are useless in any way, shape, or form. I would have been lying if I had and I. Do. Not. _Lie._ To. You, Severus!"

He felt so raw that he couldn't help the harshness of his tone:

"Then what the Hell are you doing, Lucius?. _This_ doesn't feel like the truth!. It doesn't _sound_ like the truth!. It doesn't match my own view of reality at all and your attitude is not helping. I've come to you for advice. For support. For... for... for the _comfort_ of being _gifted_ with some kind of insight into what, exactly, could be going on in Potter's crazy mind, but you... you are actually confusing me further. You are attacking me. Insulting me. You are driving me spare!..."

The tea appeared beside their seats at that very second and it was a most welcome distraction. He was relived for the excuse to lower his own gaze and ignore the heartfelt sigh that had escaped his companion's throat. He attempted to gain more time to think by picking up his cup and blowing on it gently, but his effort was interrupted by Luc's incensed rant:

"I know perfectly well why you've come to me and, if you really are as honest with yourself as you've always claimed, then you'll have to agree with me eventually.

You _know_ that I don't particularly like our great Saviour. You also _know_ that the both of us have been engaged in a most foul little tug-of-war over you, in these last few weeks...

You've come here expecting me to tell you to put distance between the two of you. You want me to expose Potter as a liar. To side with you when you turn viciously against him. You want me to be your ally in your own battle against him, don't you, Severus?. You are planning to rip him to shreds and you want my help"

He had frozen where he sat. He was stunned by the sharpness of the pain that shot through his every cell upon hearing those words. He hadn't actually realized before this second that his decision had already been made. Nor had he actually began to imagine how much it would hurt him to even think of... _separating_ himself from Potter...

Losing their friendship _forever_ seemed too high a prize to pay. He didn't want to do _that. _He felt like howling with outraged fury. He felt like tearing the whole world apart, for having dared to force him into making _this_ decision.

"He has been playing sick little games with me!. He has... _mocked_ _me_ with his _lies. _He_... _promised me _friendship_ and now... now he's done _this..."_

Luc looked pale and deathly determined. His hands were curled into fists that betrayed a great tension. His eyes were shining with distress. His lips had thinned and his posture had become too rigid to successfully fake calmness, but when he spoke he pronounced every word perfectly. Precisely. With an unnerving kind of fierce restraint:

"I don't believe that he's done any of those things, Severus"

He was enraged by the daring of that answer.

"How can you look me in the eye and say this to me?. Last night that boy told me that he loves me. He went as far as to insist that he'd marry me, if I let him. He... _propositioned_ me. S_exually_, Luc!. What part of _that_ sounds like the truth to you?"

A nerve began to twitch wildly on his friend's perfectly shaved jaw. But Luc's eyes, those pale gray eyes that could freeze a crazed banshee, shone like hard diamond.

"All of it. I think that _all_ of it is true, Severus. I've been _trying_ to imply as much since you were in the hospital. I believe that the boy has romantic feelings for you. I'm reasonably certain that I'm not the only one with these suspicions, either. I'd bet my fortune on the idea that he will feel _honored_ indeed if you actually accepted this... annoyingly _premature._.. proposal of his"

His mind could not comprehend those words for a whole minute and, when it did, he could not believe that they had actually spilled forth form Luc's own lips.

He was floundering with horrified shock. His eyes bulged and his face paled. His whole body started to tremble with the stricken, utterly unwelcome realization that his friend... his friend was _mad_.

"Are you even listening to yourself, Luc?. That boy has been _pining_ for Miss Weasley since he discovered what actual romance really means!.

Since I clearly remember that girl's affections having firmly turned in Mr. Thomas' direction, during the last year of the war, I can only surmise that Potter must have shifted his illusions towards Miss Granger. They did spend an awfully long time together while they were incommunicado, after all"

Luc didn't even bother to hide his bark of derisive laughter.

"Granger?... That blasted chit has been joined at the hip to Ronald Weasley since before they left school. They married as soon as the war was over, Severus. They even have a year old child, for Merlin's sake!"

That last statement caught him entirely by surprise. He hadn't known that part... no one had mentioned a child to him in the few occasions when those two had visited Potter's apartment.

"So she is married now and has a child. That doesn't necessarily mean that he doesn't feel... _things._.. for her."

"Potter is gay, Severus"

He could not cope with that idea. Could not comprehend what he was being told. Could not accept the fact that he could have been so badly _mistaken,_ about so many things...

"No. That's just... it is _impossible!_"

"It's common knowledge, my friend. You could ask anyone and everyone will tell you the same thing: The Saviour prefers men. He is not in love with Granger. He can't be!. The very idea is _preposterous!_."

There was a coil of genuine dread slithering slowly down his spine, turning his whole being into a single monolith of frozen ice and paralyzing terror.

"Even if that is true, it still doesn't mean that he loves _ME!_"

Luc's nostrils flared on the receiving end of that unvoiced challenge. They were both slytherin enough to understand that Severus required proof. A proof that, Merlin help him, his friend seemed determined to provide.

He remained seated were he was. Literally incapable of moving his body a single inch as he looked straight into those pale gray eyes and felt as if the whole of his future was about to be decided in this second. His entire belief system was being firmly dismantled. His every assumption about the boy, about the friendship that they had both started, about the... _intensity._.. of those moments that he had tried so hard to ignore was being re-aligned. Shaken. Turned upside down without mercy.

His heart banged inside his chest and his breath hitched. His very blood seemed to have slowed down in terrified expectation of the other man's answer, only... when that answer finally reached his ears it didn't seem to make much sense at all. It was so totally unexpected that he frowned.

"Could you describe Healer Peterssen to me, Severus?"

The simple question made him feel inexplicably sick and he blinked in absolutely distressed disconcertion. He could not understand what was happening here.

"What's there that you don't know, Luc? The man is a sadistic son of a bitch!"

There was a softly derisive snort followed by a sharp wave of his companion's right hand.

"I meant _physically_, Severus. Do you actually recall what he looks like?"

"Why?. Haven't you seen him?. I don't understand why you've brought that bloody bastard into _this_ conversation"

Luc didn't waver. His pale face had acquired the very appearance of hewn granite and he looked ready to tame actual Giants, if he had to.

"Just... humor me on this, please"

The tea that he'd been sipping until that very second started to roll inside his belly as if it were a lethally dark poison. He was having more than second thoughts about the wisdom of his decision to come here. He could not _see_ were the conversation might be going. Couldn't see any possible connexion between the topic of Potter's supposed affection towards him and the insane jerk that had tortured him, almost to death, during his brief stint in Azkaban. Now, though, his curiosity was piqued. Now he had to _know._ He just... had to.

"He is tall and thin like a reed. Pale skinned. Quiet. Elegant. He moves slowly and silently, like a cat. He speaks with an upper class accent that can't hide the fact that he... looks down on everyone around him. He has a thin mouth. A long nose. Dark eyes. Dark hair. He looks... I don't know... What exactly is it that you want me to tell you, Luc?"

There was a small, terrible smile curving his friend's lips. There was a kind of shattered quality to his pale gaze. An expectant sort of rigidity to his very posture and there was a look that could kill in his eyes...

"Doesn't _that_ description remind you of _anyone _you know, Severus?. Wouldn't those same words be perfectly acceptable to portray a picture of... _you_?.

Aren't _you_ also pale and thin and tall enough to make a willow weep?. Aren't you also restrained and elegant and mostly derisive towards those around you?. Aren't your eyes black like ebony? Isn't your hair the color of midnight?...

Wouldn't you say then, Severus, that, at least on words alone, you _do_ _look_ very much like healer Peterssen?"

If the world had stopped turning right at that second he most probably wouldn't have noticed it. He felt... _devastated_ by this truly unwelcome comparison. He was... utterly revolted by the idea. He was positively _shattered_ by the loathsome _implications_ that he could now guess were buried under the poisonous... _carcass._.. of this particular monster...

He stood up with an agitated, jerky movement. The fragile teacup that he had been holding shattered against the floor with a loud crack as he all but jumped away from his seat. Hands thrown up, in front of his own chest, in a purely defensive gesture that seemed to rile his friend enough to also bring him to his feet.

"Severus, you've got to listen to me!"

There was no force on this Earth that would make him do such a thing!.

"No. NO, Luc!. I do _not_ want to _hear_ any of _this!_. Whatever it is, whoever it _affects, _you _must_ let this dragon lie..."

The silence that followed was fraught with deep tension. Lucius was pale. He was fiercely furious. He seemed about ready to bring down the whole dammed wards to seal the room.

"I _wish_ I could _do_ that, Severus!. I wish to Hell that I could. I don't think you are strong enough to be confronted with any of this just yet. It's way too soon... But _Potter._.. bloody-stupid-Potter had to go and _rush_ you into a retreat.

I am _not_ prepared to stand aside and let you throw away this chance to find true happiness, though. Not yet. Not unless you _try_ this first and then tell me that it can't possibly work!"

He stood back. Afraid. Aghast. Utterly astonished by the fact that he'd been right... with a fierce wave of his wand Luc had locked down the doors, barring all exits.

"Open the door, Luc!. I mean it. You can not keep me here against my will!" He warned in a tone that was as hard as the very bricks of Hogwarts. He was mad enough to punch his friend of almost 30 years on the nose. He was incensed beyond reason. He was trembling like a leaf. He was livid with anger...

"Potter met that _bastard_ on the job. He got injured and was taken to St. Mungo's"

"Luc, I am warning you. I do _not_ want to hear any of this. You need to shut the Hell up and let me out. NOW!"

His furious interruption merely drove the other man to petrify him. He could not believe his friend had dared to attack him in that manner. Least of all when Lucius actually _knew_ that he could not retaliate. He was accioed and then placed back on his recently vacated chair.

He was forced to endure this. Forced into a magical immovability by the one man on Earth he would have never expected to betray him. He could not physically remove himself from the situation any longer, but his every sense was alive with indignant rancor. He was fuming so hard that his eyes were shooting lethally poisoned daggers at his so-called best friend.

Luc knelt beside his unresponsive body. Gently arranging his limbs into a more comfortable position before fixing troubled gray eyes upon his own.

"I _know_ that you hate me right now, my friend. I know that you feel that I've... turned my back on you. But this_._.. _this_ I've got to _do!._ _This_ I won't let go. Not yet.

I can't let you go back to that castle and send Potter packing. I just _can't!._ _This_ is the best thing that has happened to you for a long time and I love you enough to risk losing our friendship, if it means that you'll find happiness, Severus"

A visibly trembling hand dug wavering furrows through Luc's silky blond locks with uncharacteristic carelessness. There was a small beat of silence as his friend swallowed with obvious difficulty. He seemed to be thinking over what he was about to say, planning his next words with a great care...

"Potter was rushed to the ER after one of his missions went belly up. I don't know the details, but I know that he was badly injured... Peterssen was the healer on-call. He took care of the boy and then proceeded to tear him a new one over the reckless behavior that had led him to be injured in the first place.

No one had dared to speak thus to Potter in a very long time, you see?. He was held in almost... god-like awe after the war. When Peterssen screamed at him, in front of half the St. Mungo's staff, no less, it was an absolute scandal. The healer got suspended for six moths, but Potter... Potter was hooked!"

Luc came to a sudden halt then. Gaze turned inwards and face drawn with obvious stress. The silence pulsed around them with a suffocating, thunderous energy and Severus wished that he could vanish himself home right at that second.

"I believe that Harry Potter saw a living, talking, thinking image of you in healer Peterssen. I believe that he... he'd given up on your eventual recovery by that time. I believe that he was _willing_ to settle for a second-rate copy of you, if he couldn't have _you_...

The fact is that they got involved and, for a while, it became quite serious.

Then we got a break on your case and Potter refused to leave your bedside. He literally moved to the castle. He left both work and relationship hanging. He cared for nothing but pushing you back to health... after a while Peterssen got fed up. He came to Hogwarts and screamed at the boy...

It was ghastly, Severus. Just... _ghastly_. They were rowing right outside the infirmary. Everybody heard them hurl awful things at each other. At the end of it all, Peterssen gave Potter a very simple choice: a living lover, who could respond to him in every way, or the half-dead shell of an enemy who had always hated him. A man who would most probably never recover...

"_I choose the memory of a man who, even asleep, is a million times better than you'll ever be"..._ that's what Potter said, Severus. I heard him with my own ears. I was there, you see?.

It got printed in every paper there is for three months in a row. It was repeated in every language, in every country, in every household... It is now forever linked to your name: You, Severus Snape, are the man who even asleep is worth a million others..."

A lump lodged in his throat. It was heavy like granite and bitter, like old bile. He was _devastated_ by the account that he'd just heard. Positively broken by the fact that he'd been _tortured_ by the head auror's jilted lover in what appeared now to be a fit of dark jealousy...

He didn't realize that Luc had freed him from the constrains of the Petrificus until his whole upper body plopped without any strength against the backrest of his chair. He blinked dazedly. Utterly mortified to find that a film of hot tears were burning his dark eyes.

He swallowed convulsively, trying to calm himself. His mind was abuzz with a horrible kind of... anxious distress that he was simply unable to control.

Silence fell. A jagged, brutally cold, tense-filled quietude that heralded darkness. Chaos... For nothing good could possibly come out from this much _madness._..

"Severus?"

Luc's hand settled on his arm. Tugged him impatiently and he lowered his dark head in order to stare straight into the worried, pale gaze that rose to meet his.

"I don't _know_ what you want me to do, Luc. I... I do not _love _Harry Potter."

The sentence echoed around the room like an explosive rebellion. Like a curse born to murder. Like the truth that it was...

His companion settled more comfortably on his knees and turned his blond head to the side, examining him pensively.

"Do you really think I don't know that, Severus?"

He was ruffled by that cryptic little answer. He was utterly fed-up with all these games.

"Then... _why_ the Hell did you lock me inside this bloody room?. Why bother to tell me all this, against my explicit instructions to keep quiet?. What is it that you are expecting me to do with all of this... utterly useless knowledge?"

Luc shrugged his wide shoulders and a smile that was as ruthless as it was beautiful curved his pink lips.

"This is the life that I, among a dozen others, fought so hard to give you, Severus. You have the _right_ to know these things!. They are a part of your past that you could not witness. They are coloring your present. They can, so very easily, _change_ your whole future for the better... Harry Potter does love _you_. I think every bloody witch and wizard alive knows it. And now... now you know it too"

"I do not feel the same, Luc. I thought he wanted a _friendship_. I've been in love with his mother my whole life!"

The aristocrat's snort was a work of sheer disdain.

"Did you truly love her or just... the _idea_ of her?. She was beautiful, I agree, Severus. She was charming and smart and she was popular. She didn't care for what others thought about her involvement with you and refused to turn her back on you. For a long time... she was a dream come true for the isolated and insecure little boy you used to be...You put her on a pedestal and she let you. You loved her with the hope of a child who wanted to believe in fairy tales. It was _never_ about real emotion, it was just... an _illusion_. A dream. A magnificently beautiful hope that turned out to be worthless in the end..."

Hot tears fell, at last, from his dark eyes. They burned the skin of his cheeks like twin rivers of lava. He was being savaged in this second. His entire heart... his most precious emotions, his most tender affections lay trampled and shredded to ribbons under Lucius Malfoy's boots.

"Be quiet now, Luc!. Please... If there was ever a time when I needed you to just... _shush_... that time is now"

A pale hand, burdened with the dazzling gold and silver of richly engraved rings, rose towards his pale features. His shameful tears were dried in utter silence. His hair was combed. His friend remained by his side for a long time...

Eventually, though, he shifted. Attempted to sit forwards. Removed his whole frame from all contact with Luc's hands. He wondered what to do. What to say. He felt worse than he had felt before he arrived...

"Could you love him, Severus?"

The unexpected question broke the suffocating tension and he turned, sharply, to stare towards his friend. Luc held his gaze with a look born of nothing but pure challenge, sheer determination and a fierce need to know.

"Excuse me?"

"I asked you if you think that you could love him. Maybe not now. Nor tomorrow. Maybe not even next year or the next, but... someday, in the future...

Is it truly so _unthinkable_ to imagine that you might come to... _reciprocate..._ Potter's feelings?"

He was rendered speechless by the idea. He was... utterly astonished by the very concept that he should... what?. Keep Potter _hanging_ with the promise of a future that might never come for them?.

"I can't!. I _won't_. I'm not telling that child to waste his life on me, on the off chance that I might change my mind. That's just... it's _unconscionable,_ Luc!"

"Do you really think he'll forget you?. He _hung_ on to you when every one around him told him that you were as good as _lost_ to the rest of us. He has hoped _beyond_ hope, Severus!. He has... _adored_ you every single second of the last four years despite the fact that you... you didn't even _know_ it!.

A man like this will not give up. He won't let go just because you tell him to. He'll go back to love you from afar!.

If you _want_ to go ahead and sever all your ties with him then, by all means, do it. But do it for _yourself._ To benefit no one but you. Do not _make_ this decision trying to _save_ _him,_ because he doesn't want to be saved.

I think that you should treat this as a chance. An opportunity to find out if you could truly come to care for him, at some point. Tell him that you are uncertain. Tell him to just... wait. Tell him that you need more time and I promise you, Severus... that he'll give it to you"

He rose from his seat in utter agitation. He was burdened by an awfully tight pressure that was crushing his whole chest, settling over his rolling stomach and curtailing his freedom to breathe properly.

"I. Do. _Not._ Love. Him.! He is a child. HER _child_, Lucius!"

His friend turned around to stare at him, outraged disagreement was openly flashing from within the pale beauty of those gray eyes. There was a nerve pulsing constantly on the side of Luc's firm jaw and the most absolute despair was weighing those wide shoulders down.

"Harry Potter is the kind of person that you wanted Evans to be!. He loves you with the kind of devotion that she never felt towards you. He is alive while she... She. Is. DEAD, Severus!. She has been dead, by now, for longer than she lived.

Even if you decide that her son is not to your taste, there will be others. You are now perceived as a great warrior. You are a hero of almost legendary proportions. There will be opportunities open to you that were never there before. You could find a _companion,_ someone who will love you and care for you, but you _need_ to let _HER_ go. You've got to... You'll never find happiness otherwise!"

He was shocked by that concept. Transfixed by the horrible idea of actively _seeking_ to... _forget_ her. How could he?. It didn't seem to be something that he could do, even if he wanted to.

"I don't _know_ if that's even possible, Luc. I can't turn my own emotions, on and of, as if they are the water coming off a tap."

"How many times have you _thought_ of her while you've been in the boy's presence?"

He frowned at the question and his lips thinned. He disliked analyzing his own actions, his own thoughts. He _disliked_ having others _analyze_ them even more.

"I don't _know_. He is very different from her. I have been _trying_ to get to know the man he has become. I've told you this already: I thought we were building a friendship!"

Luc stood up then. He rolled his shoulders around, like a fighter. He shook his fair hair away from his pale eyes and looked straight at him with the kind of challenge that few men ever dared to send his way.

"Then _build_ a _friendship, _Severus. What harm could _that_ cause you?. Get to know him. Don't think about any of this and just... go on as you have been. See where it leads you"

His heart clenched. His breath halted. He could not cope with the anxiety that this conversation was causing him...

"I can't do that now. He does NOT want just a friendship, Luc. He wants _MARRIAGE!_"

"So?. He can't marry you unless you agree. You have every advantage here. Do not close this door unless you are certain that it can't lead to your happiness, Severus.

I have _seen_ this boy grow up. I have seen what he has done for you, on your behalf... I have seen in his actions the kind of devotion that is very hard to find... He loves you just like you deserve to be loved.

He is young. Attractive. Rich. Loyal. A hero in his own right... There's nothing undesirable there. You'll never be second-best with him. You'll never be cherished only among shadows, either. You'll be his _everything_. Up front. In public... What else is there that you want?"

The question rang. And rang. AND RANG. It echoed in the sudden silence of the room like the utterly frustrated bark that it truly was. He heard it not only with his ears but also with the whole of his mind. With the whole of his heart. With the whole of himself...

He could understand Luc's argument, he truly could. But he was also unable to dismiss his own concepts of right and wrong regarding this. He could not consider entering into any kind of... _relationship._.. with the child. Not when he didn't feel what he should. Not as a means to break away from his own loneliness, because _that_ would turn out to be a disaster...

"I want _truth_, Luc. I won't use him. I can't!. I just... _can't_"

"I'm not telling you to use him. I'm telling you to wait and see. This could be the best thing that's ever happened to you, Severus!"

He could see that they'd get nowhere from here. They had become _entrenched._ Both disagreeing at a very basic level and unable to reconcile to the other's point of view. He needed to think about this with the kind of calmness that he wouldn't find right here, he needed to cut himself free from the pressure that Luc was trying to put on him...

"I need to get back"

His friend's sigh was so explosive that it echoed around the walls with the strength of a scream.

"Don't do it, my friend. _Please_, just... _DON'T!_"

They both looked at each other for a second. Silence settled between them like a thick veil.

"I have to get back to the castle before they send out a search party, Luc. I came out without informing anyone of my whereabouts... They might be worried."

With a sharp wave of his wand the owner of the house opened the door that he'd, so forcefully, locked down earlier.

Severus turned around and walked determinedly away without uttering a single word further. His footsteps echoed on the marble floor like the loud roar of thunder, making him cringe. He wanted nothing more than to leave the room behind...

"Severus"

He'd just reached the doorway when he heard Luc's voice calling him back. His friend would make one last attempt to sway him, then. He'd play one last card...

"Yes?"

"What are you going to do?"

The simplicity of the question caught him on the raw. He'd been expecting some kind of last-minute argument. With a hand already on the doorknob he turned his head around, in order to stare straight into those pale and worried gray eyes.

"I don't know, Luc. I need to think. I'm too confused... I don't honestly know what I will do..."

TBC...


	28. Chapter 28

_**THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 28**_

By the time the knock finally came on his front door he'd been ready to accept that it wouldn't actually come that day. After that harrowing visit to the Manor he'd returned to Hogwarts in a state of chaotic anxiety and had been half expecting to find Potter seating on the couch as he'd stepped out of the fireplace.

He'd been far too relieved to find himself alone to be surprised by the disconcerting... _disappointment..._ that he'd felt at the absence of the auror.

As the day dragged slowly on he became more and more aware of the slight feeling of... concern_..._ that was constantly whispering unfounded fears in the back of his already fretting mind.

Every time someone knocked on his door he jumped warily. His heart pounded within his chest and his pale face became ashen with distressed nervousness. He'd croak his permission to enter in a voice that was almost too breathless to be heard before standing up, too agitated to remain seated. Too weary of their upcoming confrontation to give the boy the advantage that looming over his own seated figure would grant him...

It was never _him_, though. _Never._

He'd sat through an exhausting amount of friendly visits. He smiled politely, so much so, that he became truly convinced that the muscles of his face would cramp for all eternity into the utterly ghastly image of his best attempt at a reasonably neutral smile...

By the time lunch came around he'd been merely irritated that Potter hadn't shown yet. He could understand why the child would want to allow him some time to cool off. He'd cut him of mid-sentence with another accidentally triggered act of wishful magic the last time they'd spoken, after all...

He'd been seated on that couch, feeling utterly trapped. He'd been distressed beyond endurance by the boy's unexpected use of the word _marriage_ and had _desired_ for the whole conversation to be... _terminated_.

He didn't honestly know if he'd done it himself or if the castle had decided to provide him with the magic that he had been wanting to perform so desperately... what he _knew_ was that one second Potter had been speaking to him eagerly from the fireplace and the next the whole hearth had become an ancient looking wall of solid rock.

It didn't seem to matter that the fireplace had returned to it's normal level of functionality by the following morning. He'd used it to go visit Luc, after all...

Potter had taken the action rather personally, it would seem, as the boy had not only _failed_ to show up when Severus had been actually certain that he would, but had also decided not to contact him through the floo, either...

The afternoon stretched before him in and endless succession of over-exited student whispering, whenever they so much as caught sight of him, and the strangely new... _warmth_ with which the other members of the staff seemed to be willing to treat him.

He'd been forced to share a rather intriguing conversation with Longbottom about the new range of potion-related plants and shrubs that the man had started to raise in glasshouse number two.

George Weasley had demanded that he read his proposed curriculum for the DADA class, never-mind that the man had been using it for years. It had never been revised by himself, apparently.

Severus had been uncomfortable the whole time the man had been standing next to him. Head bowed down to look towards the thick wad of parchment that he'd been carrying in a way that had openly exposed the area were the man's left ear should had been...

He'd squirmed with discomfort and was utterly shocked when the dratted creature lifted his head suddenly and, after having caught him staring, smiled brightly at him:

"Don't worry yourself too much about it, Headmaster!. There is no one else alive who can claim to have been injured by you, Sir. It's a great honor... I'm rather fond of it by now, you know?. It helped me finally pull my Angelina. She's rather... entranced... by it"

Severus had abandoned the teacher's lounge very soon after that truly disconcerting encounter and hadn't yet managed to gather enough courage to return.

He'd holed up inside his own private chambers for the remainder of the day and proceeded to discover that his dearly missed former lifestyle was not to his taste anymore...

While living with Potter he'd spent most of his time longing for the solitude he used to have in abundance before the war. He had dreamed of having the peace of utter silence surrounding him once more. He remembered with great fondness all those mornings spent in splendid solitude, when no one had bothered him about breakfast or attempted to engage him in unwanted conversation while he tried to read one of his cherished books... While he lived with the boy he had _resented_ Potter's constant chatter. The constant noises that his unrelenting presence brought. The absolutely _impossibility_ of having a single second of quietude to... retreat within his mind and just... _think_.

Now, though, his thoughts were an unwelcome miasma of distressed fears and memories that were both old and new. His mind was crowded with tormenting thoughts of Lily. Of Luc's unique and ruthless take on what their relationship with one another had been truly about...

He remembered Potter's kiss and their subsequent fight. He remembered the gentleness with which the boy had actually come to his rescue when he'd needed him the most...

He'd been lost at Hogwarts. Afraid of how his actions might be interpreted by the magic of their oath. He had felt helpless, utterly terrified... He'd have gone mad with anxious terror if the boy hadn't reached him when he did. Potter had been... beyond decent to him then. He had been positively _caring._ Reassuring. Tender. He'd been... utterly _loving_...

Sitting all alone in his high-backed chair he remembered that strange conversation they had held through Legilimency, or even the one they had through the floo, and a wave of deep loneliness settled over him.

He hadn't realized at the time just how... _supportive_ the child was. How his constant presence, his unwavering intrusion into Severus' own thoughts and emotions, his constant demands for actual interaction between them, had brought them both so close to each other that now... _now_ he just _missed_ the blasted creature...

He'd been _missing_ him for weeks, if he was honest. His own behavior of late had been nothing but a bid for the auror's attention as he struggled and struggled to... _communicate_ his own, desperate need for some sort of... _resolution_ to their unwanted estrangement.

With hindsight he could now see that he'd acted like an absolute jerk after their kiss, in the hope of driving the brat to take the kind of action that he himself felt he couldn't take. He'd wanted the child to _explode._ To force them back into friendship. To help him navigate the stormy waters that were threatening the relationship that they had been sharing before Potter's unsolicited caress...

_Everything_ would had been just _fine_ if Potter hadn't come out with those astonishingly ridiculous claims of... _love!_.

The mere idea of giving up their friendship curled his stomach. He could not believe how... _attached..._ he'd grown to the other man in so short a space of time. He'd been missing their joint expeditions to the book-store. The teasing camaraderie that they exchanged as they browsed aisle after aisle in the local supermarket, tirelessly searching for those perfect ingredients that would inspire them to create the evening meal... He had even missed all those brainless films that the child loved and he... he could not bring himself to even _think_ about the popcorn...

Losing _this_ would be... it would be nothing short of devastating. Absolutely soul-destroying. Truly ghastly... But the alternative was just... too _unfair!_.

Severus had been forced to live through the ordeal of accepting only friendship from the woman he'd loved beyond reason and he knew exactly how... _devastating._.. such situation could be. He had no _intention_ of putting that child through it. He could not bring himself to do it. He _wouldn't_.

In the end it all came down to what was right. He _liked_ Potter. Maybe he even felt some sort of _fondness_ for the auror. He'd enjoyed their budding friendship, while it lasted. Valued it to the point were he would miss it beyond what was healthy once he lost it... He wished with all of his heart that he didn't have to give it up, but... he did not _love_ the child.

He wanted... _peace_. He needed to _abandon_ all entanglements of the heart and just... find some sort of _contentment_ that did not depend on others, for a change...

He agreed, at least on principle, with Luc's harsh opinion that he needed to free himself from Lily's ghost. But he refused to let go of one heartbreak to step straight into another. Potter... Potter was a child who had a simple case of hero worship. The emotions that he claimed to feel might look now true enough but they were based on the kind of wishfulness that can only genuinely feed dreams.

Reality would end up turning that love to dust eventually. Reality would show the boy's dreamed up hero to be nothing but an ugly, monstrous man with a foul temper. An old, wounded carcass that had never held much beauty within its frame. A soul too burdened with sorrow to be brightened by the rash and fleeting promises of a man who was... too young for him in every respect.

One day Potter would wake up and find himself _free_ from all these emotions that now trapped him. He'd find shelter with another, far more suitable, young man. He'd find safety and joy. Contentment...

Maybe then they could resume their failed friendship... Or maybe by then it'd be too late to recover what would have to be severely broken, in order to buy the child his chance at... liberty!.

He'd just stood up, with the intention of preparing a cup of tea for himself, when the knock finally came. He knew, just _knew,_ that this time it was Potter. He could feel the boy's agitated magic filtering through the door, through the very walls... He could feel, in the very back of his head, the mere touch of the boy's restless mind as it projected a veritable hurricane of distressed anxiety straight into his very own consciousness.

His heart cramped with the awareness that this was it: the only time he would ever have to break a heart. Reject the affection of someone willing to adore him. This would be the last time he'd see the boy. The very last...

He bid Potter entry with a tone that was barely above a whisper and then waited, still as a statue, for the door to be pushed open. For the gryffindor to act...

Potter came in like a whirlwind. Like a storm. Like only he could...

He was disheveled and looked wild. His hair was all over the place. There were deep shadows under his beautiful green eyes that screamed to the world the fact that this was a man who hadn't slept a wink, hadn't actually gone to bed by the look of him.

The door closed with a loud clank and those wide shoulders squared as if he himself were a fire-breathing dragon that the child must face and kill.

A pale face searched for him among the shadows that filled the room and that emerald gaze portrayed a deep despair when it finally clashed with his own:

"Malfoy says you are going to drop me!"

He was unbalanced by that uncompromisingly direct opening volley and more than merely surprised by the fact that Luc had apparently decided to intervene.

"Luc has no right to speak to you about any of this!. The situation does not concern him."

Potter didn't even bother to show patience.

"You _went_ to him, Severus!. Your very actions involved him in this, so... don't go now trying to blame him for deciding that he needs to stick his oar in"

He swallowed a sharp retort and took a deep breath instead.

"Fine!. What did he have to say, then?"

Restless fingers burrowed through that dark mop of tangled locks.

"He told me to stay clear of you. To avoid you for a week or two, using as many excuses as I could come up with. He said that you needed to see _me_ while I'm absent...

He was reasonably certain that, if I managed to avoid giving you the chance to cut this off now, then you might end up shelving the idea altogether out of sheer loneliness."

He felt cold to his very bones at the mere possibility. He believed that he wouldn't be able to live with himself if he condemned them _both_ to a future filled with heartbreak for the wrong reasons.

"I'm afraid then that my friend doesn't know me as much as he thinks he does. _Nothing_ will make me _change_ this decision, Potter!. Not you. Not Luc. Not... _loneliness_"

The auror's gaze became ablaze with the kind of fire that only those who are fighting for their very lives are able to call forth.

"Then you'll have to say it, Severus: out loud. To my face. With the kind of words that won't ever allow me to keep my hopes up"

The demand cut through him like a knife cuts through butter. Pain engulfed him from the top of his dark head to the tip of his pale toes. His breath hitched and his pulse began to pound with sheer anxiety. He _detested_ the situation. He resented the awful guilt that was making every part of his tall body _itch_ with discomfort.

"I do _not_ _love_ you, Harry Potter" He finally whispered in a croaked, dismayed whisper and felt like the lowest of all beasts when the boy's eyes filled with tears.

"I _know_ that!"

They both looked into each other's eyes for a long second. Silence grew like a dark cloud all around them. Severus could bring himself to say no more. He didn't _desire_ to harm this child. Not now. Maybe not ever from this day forth...

He'd come to value this man for his own sake. He'd learned that Lily's child was a patient, loyal human being who deserved to find happiness. He could not bring himself to cause him more harm than this. He just... couldn't!.

"For a man who could go to war with a bloody dictionary and come out victorious you are not being very articulate about this, Severus."

He was startled to discover that the auror wanted him to... elaborate. The very concept had the power to make him feel sick. He started to shiver with horrified distress, feeling cold down to his bones. Faint with misery.

"I do not see what else is there to say!. I can not give you the things you want from me. This has to end right here for the good of us both"

Potter sighed with heartfelt exhaustion and his eyes dulled visibly into a murky, cloudy mess of deep green sorrow.

"Wouldn't you say that _that_ depends on what you think I _want_?. I agree that you don't love me. I even agree that, from were we are standing at this moment, it doesn't look very likely that one day you might. But then you'll also have to agree that you don't actually have a single clue about what exactly it is that I want from you"

He was riled by that ridiculous claim, totally unprepared to deal with this _refusal_ to accept rejection gracefully.

"How can you say that?. You told me just last night that you wanted _marriage_, Potter. I would have had to be utterly deaf to have missed _that!_"

A sharp bark of bitter laughter broke the awful tension.

"I said that I would marry you if I thought you'd have me. That's _not_ the same as saying that I _want_ to put my ring on your finger right this second and be done with it, Severus!. I'm not stupid enough to expect that you'll just... _comply..._ with such a thing, for Merlin's sake!.

That's what I dream about, what I actually desire. It is not what I believe possible for us to have, though. What I actually _want_ is to have you in my life in whichever capacity you can bring yourself to accept me.

I _want_ to be granted the honor of calling you my friend. I _want_ to know that you and I... that _we_ can count on one another to be there for whatever life might decide to throw our way tomorrow. I _want_ to see you, always. I _want_ to be beside you somehow. I _want_ us to continue as we were before I was idiotic enough to kiss you, OK?"

His throat dried with the utter horror of having to open his lips to repeat himself anew. He was not entirely comfortable with the situation. He was actually beyond sickened with the whole thing.

"It doesn't really matter what spin you decide to put on it, Potter!. It all comes down to the same facts. I'm never going to be able to provide you with..."

"Friendship? Companionship? Support?. Don't be stupid, Severus! Of course you are able to provide me with all three. You just don't _want_ to have to live with the discomfort of having me around now that you know about my feelings"

He gaped at the audacity of the brat. Potter had _dared_ not only to interrupt him, in the rudest of manners, but had actually issued him a challenge that he had no intention of accepting.

"I do not think it healthy for me to provide you with further... _access_ to my person when I'm fairly certain that I shall never come to _reciprocate_ your... _affections_. It is my sincere belief that you might have an easier time of... _forgetting..._ your current feelings if our association comes to a clean end."

"So you are sacrificing _us_ in order for _me_ to move on eventually. Is that it?. You'll lose a friend but I... I'll get to _benefit_ from your kind actions... Give me a break, will you?. That whole idea is nothing short of a big, fat mountain of stinking _troll-shit!_"

He was so unprepared to have the boy deride him for his choice that he just... gaped. Silence settled between them as his dark eyes widened with disconcerted befuddlement and settled over the auror's face with something very close to open disbelief.

"I beg your pardon?" He stuttered at last, utterly unable to come up with anything more eloquent.

"I said that you are a bloody idiot if you think I'll let you play the big, selfless hero and walk away!. I want you to be a bloody greedy bastard!. I want you to keep holding onto _us_ and not be bothered with whatever the Hell happens to my heart. That's none of your business anyway, Severus. If I _want_ to... _pine._.. after you like some kind of pathetic, pale-faced maiden, then that's my own dammed headache, OK?"

He was well past traumatized by this point. He could not _believe_ his ears. Was this idiot actually daring to demand that he... _ignore_ the whole situation and continue to encourage their association without a thought for how much pain he might be causing?.

"I'm afraid that that's not possible, Mr. Potter. I have experienced that kind of heartache in my own flesh. I can't in good conscience allow you to... _suffer._.. such fate.

A man as stubborn as you are won't be able to let go, unless this relationship of ours breaks completely. Hope has a way of being our worst enemy every time that we _dare_ to love another"

Potter looked truly broken then. Smashed. Demolished...

He looked lifeless and weakened. Like a human-shaped lump that has lost his whole spirit. His every dream. His rightful claim to joy.

"It's not your place to _allow_ or even _ease_ my suffering, Severus. The very idea that you believe yourself _entitled_ to even try it comes to show how truly presumptuous you can be.

I'm not a child any longer. I do not follow orders from anyone, least of all from _you!_. I will love and hate and care for whomever I see fit and there'll nothing you can _do_ to stop me from doing so!"

He was faint with sheer stress. Utterly drained by the antagonistic nature of their conversation, by the fact that he was forcing himself to go through with this when the only thing he wanted to do was... collapse... back in his chair and close his burning eyes. Hide, inside the most protected corner of his own mind, until all of _this_ finally disappeared...

His body went rigid with the most unwelcome shock when the boy dared to touch him. He'd come closer while Severus' own thoughts had been turned inwards and a hand that was, as always, way too daring for it's own good had settled over the cloth that covered his forearm.

"Come and sit before you fall, Severus, please..."

Potter dragged him most rudely back towards his chair and even dared to push him down into it without so much as a by-your-leave. He blinked with dark-eyed perplexity up into those fathomless depths of sheer determination and shivered when the child's rough-tipped fingers brushed a long lock of his dark hair away from his sweaty temple.

"Will you _explode _into outraged indignation if I order us some tea?. You look like you need some, Professor."

He felt numb with sheer surprise. With disconcertion. With the most absolute and irrational sense of... _relief..._ that he'd felt in a long time.

Potter... Potter was taking over. He was _refusing_ to listen. He was being... stubbornly _insistent_ that they continue exactly as they had been before, and he... he could not really work out how to _convince_ the boy to do otherwise.

Would it really be so _horrible_ of him to just... give up?. Grant the gryffindor his attention. His friendship. His... _support,_ without feeling this guilty about the fact that he... he could not, would not, ever _love_ him?...

"Severus?"

Potter held onto him with those hands. Fingers curled very gently around his reedy shoulders and those eyes that could slay dragons fixed unblinkingly upon him.

"Look at me, Severus. Do I have your permission to call for the drinks?"

His mind whirled and he moved his head in jerky, disjointed accord. He did not want to drink tea. Not now. He wanted... He wanted to _curl_ tightly into this chair and close his eyes. His mind. His senses. He wanted to... remain aloof. He needed to escape...

He wanted to _survive_ this very second without having to open his mouth. Without having to _live_ for ever after with the knowledge that he could be _weak_ enough to be this _selfish_. That he could be _monstrous_ enough to... _condemn..._ Lily's child to the same sort of loveless misery that he himself had endured during the majority of his life...

"I do _not_ love you" He forced his trembling lips to say it again. Aloud. Precisely.

Potter flinched, but still held onto him, onto his shoulders, with those hands that just wouldn't let go.

"I _know_ that, Severus" The four words reached him like pained, sharp-tipped daggers. They settled against his conscience like a wound that would never close.

"I will _never_ love you. _Never!._ I won't _go_ through that heartbreak again..."

Potter's face turned visibly white. His hands shook. His green eyes filled with a veritable storm of wounded sorrow.

"Would you _care_ for me, though?. As a friend, Severus?"

The question hung in the air for a long time. It felt, to his mind, like a blade meant for murder. Whatever his answer he'd be condemned to suffer the consequences of it from this day forth. Was he actually _this_ selfish...?.

"I can not answer you. Not right now. I shall not _promise_ you anything. I will not feed you false hope. I just... _can't!._

I'll tell you this, though: we can not be friends in the actual sense of the word until you free me, Potter. I can be your _slave_ but not your _friend._ Not really...

You _know_ this, child. You have _always_ known _this._ I'm bound against my will to this castle. I was bound to Albus Dumbledore and to the Dark Lord in the same way. I have been a _prisoner,_ in one form or another, for most of my adult life and I don't think I have the strength to live like that once more... You'll have nothing _genuine_ from me if you continue to hold my fate in the palm of your hands."

Potter laughed with the sort of mirth that betrays heartbreak. It was a soft and broken sound. Jagged, sharp, discordant...

"You are a hard man to bargain with, are you not, Severus Snape?"

The question rent the air with a bitter kind of wonder and he was unable to look into those eyes as the boy seemed to wait for an answer that he couldn't offer him.

After a second of suffocating silence Potter finally sighed. He bit down on his trembling bottom lip and then stood back. Fingertips slowly releasing their grasp on Severus's own shoulders.

"Truth... Malfoy said you wanted _truth_, whatever that might mean...

I want to believe that it is your way of saying that you are finally ready to face _this_. That the time to stop playing games has finally arrived. All our cards are already on the table, anyway. We are _both_ exposed now. Our strengths and our weaknesses have been left out in the open and now we are going to have to do _this_ as it should have been done from the beginning...

I call forth the magic of all oaths!. I state before all powers that you: Severus Snape, have fulfilled the letter of our vow to my full satisfaction. I hereby release you from our terms!"

Potter's wand appeared then. It was pointed straight at him with an unwavering determination. Green eyes that were shattered with loss blinked only once and when the boy pronounced the spell his voice thundered in the silence like a fist demanding compliance. It clamored for attention, forcing the oath itself into utter and indisputable submission:

"Dabo Libertatem tibi!*"

Magic swirled then around them both: warm, familiar and heartbreakingly loving. Severus felt it as it tried to touch him... so _carefully_... that it felt like a gentle caress intent on holding onto him for a single second longer...

When it finally retreated it left him empty. Hollow. Utterly bereft.

Freedom had never felt before quite this unwelcome. This lonely. This much like... absolute and irreversible _defeat_...

TBC...

A/N:Dabo libertatem tibi roughly translates as I will grant you freedom. Special thanks regarding the correct Latin form of this spell are to be given to Tree of Angels who was kind enough to let me know that I had made a mistake on my first try.


	29. Chapter 29

**THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 29.**

The first thing that he saw, as he entered his office, was the crate that stood in the middle of his desk.

He frowned at it in disconcerted wariness. Mind abuzz with about a million images of the kind of horrific _token_ that some disgruntled former enemy could have decided to send him as a pointed welcome-back message that could not be misinterpreted.

He'd been back at Hogwarts for a week already and still hadn't managed to _adjust_ to the bewildering experience of finding himself treated with... _respect._ He found it very hard to interact with anyone he hadn't been close to before, because the deference with which they treated him now, compared to the almost disdainful indifference of the past, was so jarring to his senses that he just couldn't relax...

In a matter of days he'd taken to avoiding others altogether. Sequestering himself within the safety of the Headmaster's Tower for hours on end and requesting that either Draco or Minnie accompany him, whenever he'd been forced to... _accept_ the visit of one or other envoy from the ministry or a member of the board.

He'd invariably do the same whether he confronted a worried parent or a distraught child. Whether it was another hopeful candidate for a potions mentorship that he had no intention to ever concede, urging him to consider their curriculum. Promising, in vain, to shower the school with untold wealth, if only he'd agree to bestow upon them the riches of his knowledge...

He was more surprised than appalled by the idea that the crate might actually contain some crazed potion's student newest _attempt_ at convincing him to accept their mentorship application by the liberal use of plain, old-fashioned bribery.

His loud sigh shattered the oppressive silence of the office and he rubbed the bridge of his nose with a sharp, but soothing, motion and wondered when, if ever, would the astonishingly large number of... _hopefuls..._ actually realize that he had no intention whatsoever of considering their applications. Or propositions. Or... whatever the Hell it was that they plotted to offer him as an enticement.

Nothing, absolutely _nothing_ sort of a complete brain transplant, would ever convince him that it was a good idea for him to go back to teaching...

For a second or two he simply stood in the doorway, narrowed black eyes fixed upon the box as he attempted to decide what he should do. Although his presence in the castle seemed to be encouraging his own magic to return, he was not strong enough yet to cast any kind of detection spell. Not those that were worth the breath to actually pronounce them, anyway.

He suspected that Hogwarts itself had been pouring sheer magic energy into him, in order to kick-start his own depleted reserves of power and, therefore, wasn't actually certain if the few Lumos spells that he'd managed to perform were the result of his own slow, but certain, recuperation or if he had the over-eager and protective nature of the ancient school to thank for it.

Should he risk then opening this _thing_ while he was alone, literally _unarmed_ and without recourse to magical help? He cared not for those kinds of odds.

It came down to _whom_ should he call in to assist him then...

Was he willing to open whatever this might be in Minnie's presence and allow her to be witness to some truly embarrassing... _offering?. _Was he willing to bring Draco into his office and expose him to the _possibility_ that this might contain a deathly curse of some kind?. He didn't like those odds, either.

He sighed then. Frustrated with himself. With the obsolete, but crippling paranoia that he could not really abandon. With the disturbing suspicion that this would turn out to be nothing of an embarrassing or harmful nature...

He _knew_ that times had changed. That the perception others had now of him had definitely shifted for the better. He _knew_ that there was absolutely no reason why anyone would be attempting to _attack_ him in any way through this perfectly harmful _package,_ but he could not _shake_ off his whole past... Couldn't abandon a life lived as the wary victim of other people's cruelty. As the recipient of truly soul-destroying scorn. Of plain, vindictive hatred. Of the kind of brutal, self-appointed justice that had been performed against him. On him... by a truly awe-inspiring number of pissed-off-folks, during his life-time...

"You could always call in a school elf, Severus"

Albus' voice broke the silence. The old man sat within his frame and looked down at him with a soft and sad expression that brought deep shadows to the blue eyes that used to shine brightly, with all-knowing contentment, while he'd been alive.

"What if whatever lies within is truly hostile?. An elf wouldn't think to attack it without being ordered to do it. Neither it nor I would have time enough to bother with such niceties if this turns out to contain something lethal, Albus!"

That awful darkness that tainted Albus' painted eyes grew. Severus hated to see it. He literally _detested_ it!. He could not understand how it was possible for his old mentor's portrait to portray so much saddened sorrow, when the man himself had been an endless well of optimistic joie de vivre...

"This is _Hogwarts,_ Severus. This castle protects its own with so much zeal that not a single one of it's Headmasters has been struck down while in the line of duty. If there was anything at all harmful to you, contained inside that thing, the package itself wouldn't have made it to your desk, my dear boy"

Severus shivered in distressed reaction to the old man's careless words.

"You forget that _you_ were in fact struck down while in the line of duty, Albus!. You forget that it happened right _here_, in this very building, and that the wand that brought your life to a halt was held by my own hand!. Hogwarts is not _infallible._ You'd be still among us if it was..."

There were shocked gasps all around as the rest of the portraits decided that the conversation had entered the realms of the truly contentious.

Somewhere towards Severus's right Headmaster Black chuckled with dark amusement.

"Not even his blasted phoenix bird could have kept that old bastard alive for much longer, Snape!. The school _allowed_ Dumbledore to die thus because the man was determined to do so at the most convenient time that he could find. Even you'll have to agree that he couldn't possibly have chosen a better _occasion_ to bestow his _selfless_ _sacrifice_ onto the unsuspecting world, if he tried.

Headmaster Dumbledore _wanted_ to die and so he did. What's more... he _wanted_ you to kill him!. If he'd considered you an enemy on that tower you'd have been toast before your wand ever made it out of it's holder, child. You should let the old baggage go, you know?. All the mopping that has been going on around here for the last four years or so is really starting to get on my nerves..."

"Phineas!. I can't believe how heartless you can be!. We've been dealing with a very unusual situation all this time. Headmaster Snape wasn't even aware of what was happening... There's a time for impatience and there is also a time for compassion, my friend. Understanding has never been your forte, of course. But even so, I hoped you'd do better than _this."_ Headmistress Merryfield berated her fellow in affronted outrage from across the room and the whole office exploded into a literal cacophony of half-muttered whispers.

The very first signs of a tension headache began to pound behind his eyes and he fervently wished that they'd all either shut the Hell up or _disappear_. To his utter astonishment that's exactly what happened a mere second later and he wondered anew if the magic that accomplished his wish had been a spark of accidental power being released by his own recovering magic, or if the castle had decided to grant it to him.

Either way it left him utterly alone in the eerily quiet office. Wincing, in absolute dread, at the prospect of enduring their irritated lectures on the proper courtesy that should be given to the subjects of magical portraits when they finally managed to return.

His feet moved forwards of their own accord and he approached the desk. Dark eyes fixed on the heavy box as Albus' reassurance that the castle wards would have rejected it outright if it were truly dangerous flashed through his mind.

His heart lodged in his throat as his gaze settled on the cover of the package and he read the inscription that someone had painstakingly inked onto the lid:

"_What wealth of grace rests here belongs to Severus Snape..."_

He could not reconcile this neat scrawl with the memory he had of Potter's infernal handwriting, but he knew of no one else who could have inked this message. In his mind, these ten words belonged to the auror. They were Potter's. Only his. He had used them once before to give him a gift that had been beyond precious and Severus could not imagine what else the gryffindor could have to offer him that should require these particular words to be penned anew...

He hadn't been expecting to receive any sort of... _token..._ from the gryffindor. Specially not after the way they'd parted. Not after having to _literally_ drag himself through the painful _emptiness_ that the absence of the man seemed to have left behind.

The week had been long and hard. It had been filled with nothing but duty, dignity, responsibility...

He hadn't been ruthlessly _forced_ into enjoying himself, despite his own misgivings, by anyone. Nor had he been pushed out of his comfort zone in order to enjoy, or hate, a new and possibly idiotic hobby that the brat had picked out from only Salazar knew where...

There hadn't been much time for anything other than work and sleep during the week, so much so, that he'd been secretly longing for the weekend to arrive. He felt he needed some time to sit and think about what was going on in his exhausting second chance at life. He needed to process all recent developments. He needed to... ponder and plan for the future, take stock of his present and _decide_ where exactly it was that he has heading...

He'd been too busy for any of that, though, and for the first few days after his last devastating encounter with Potter he'd been too glad of the reprieve to even bother acknowledging that there was something that felt too much like _dissatisfaction_ niggling at the back of his mind all the time.

Potter had set him free of their oath and then he'd simply...walked away. Despite all those avowals of _love._ Despite Luc's anxious assurances that pushing the brat away would just... not work. The truth was that it had been almost insultingly _easy_ to get rid of the man.

Severus had said _no_ and that was all that had been needed. He hadn't even been worth the time that a single, half-hearted attempt to change his mind would have required... He'd received no owl post. No floo call. No further knocking, within the strong walls that protected his suspicious mind, had heralded a visit, no matter how short, from the bloody child.

Love seemed to be as easily forgotten by Harry Potter as that eerily empty apartment of his had first suggested...

A cold shiver run up and down Severus' spine and he suppressed the desire to rub at his own arms in a vain attempt to warm himself up. What he needed wasn't friction-induced heat, no. What he needed was the strength to convince himself of the fact that, no matter how much it hurt, he'd been right about this whole debacle... Potter had come, messed him up completely, and then had proceeded to promptly _abandon_ him, just like his mother had done so long ago...

He sighed in the oppressive silence of the room, exhaling a frustrated lungful of air in a loud and exasperated gasp. He was utterly vexed with his own maudlin thoughts.

So... after a whole week of silence the boy had decided to send something. He wondered what it could be, trying to decide if satisfying his own curiosity on the matter would be worth the humiliation.

He had no doubt as to the fact that this... _this_ would probably end up being Potter's grand, or maybe even not so grand, goodbye gesture. A token to remember the very brief friendship they had once tried to build. The official gravestone to be placed over a relationship that Severus himself had had great hopes for. The last, awful second of their painfully unlikely "_us"..._

As his pale fingers closed around the width of his own wand he could freely acknowledge that he did not want to open this box. He'd have preferred the endless silence. The hurtful absence. The unequivocal _proof_ that he'd been right all along, a heartbreaking confirmation that he'd struggled not to see in Potter's unusual distance as one day had turned into another without a single instant of contact between them.

Now there'd be a last word. A grand gesture. A new memory to be shoved into the box he'd marked inside his head with the word: disaster. The box that held both Potter and his mother. The box that held his parents. And the Dark Lord. The box that held his blind faith in Albus Dumbledore...

Despite his own almost absentminded certainty that his wand would fail to respond to his harshly whispered command. Power thrummed through the slender length of birch and the wooden lid lifted. The box laid open before him. Exposing its lovingly wrapped contents to his own dark eyed stare.

He recognized the items at once. Their loveliness remained unmarred by the packaging material meant to protect them: There was a cup with its saucer. There was a teapot to match. There was a cream jug and a sugar bowl. There was a heavy set of silver cutlery...

His heart halted in his chest and a pain that was so raw, so strong, that it should have killed him on the spot raked his body. His mind. His very soul.

A lone tear ran down the pale, ashen skin of his cheekbone and his throat constricted with the most awful sense of loss that he'd endured since the night he'd murdered Albus.

"So much for trusting you, Potter!..." He growled those words savagely into the cutting silence and only the very real certainty that he might actually go mad if he destroyed this last tangible link to his latest attempt at... _trusting_... another soul with his battered heart saved the tea set from being brutally smashed against the wall.

"You never learn. Do you, Severus?... How many more _tries_ will it take for you to realize that you are only meant for _loneliness_?..."

No one answered his question, of course. There was nobody here to witness his shameful display of emotion. But he felt even worse for having uttered the words aloud. They were weak, self-pitying. They were truly unworthy of him. They were just...

The thought froze in his head as he felt the sudden and familiar surge of Potter's warm magic. There was something in the box that pulsed with raw power. Something _other_ than these items that the child had bestowed upon his person on the very first morning they'd spent together in that flat. There was something else here that was meant for his eyes alone. He could feel the gentle thrum of a low-key notice-me spell as he brought his face closer, to peer beyond the layers of bubbly, protective wrapping. That was when he saw it: a folded piece of thick parchment had been shoved between the mouth of the teapot and its lid...

He swallowed thickly. Truly horrified by the overwhelming sense of bone-melting trepidation that had seized his every muscle. Panic... sheer, unadulterated panic was turning his every bone into rigid, unyielding stone as he stood beside his desk as if rooted to the spot.

His eyes burned with the unwillingness of those who fear the worst, but he could now not leave this alone. He had to _know_ what the boy's last words to him were. He had to find out what it was exactly that Harry Potter believed he deserved to have in lieu of... goodbye.

His hand shook as he forced himself to reach for the note, trembling fingertips brushed the cold porcelain very briefly as they pulled out the parchment.

With his prize finally in hand he stood and waited for the thundering roar in his ears to abate somewhat. Time elapsed into a vacuum of unwilling, desolate mourning. He could not summon the courage to confront this folded note.

Finally his legs folded and he flopped down, onto his chair, like a fallen tree. Like a lump of boneless matter. Like a puppet whose strings have been cut lose by it's merciless creator...The smile that curved his lips then was a heartbroken rendition of defeat. A recognition of sorrow. A pained acknowledgement that he... he had risked. And he had lost a very dear friend. Again!.

His hand straightened the parchment between quivering finger-pads. It took but a moment to read the short few lines of script that had been scrawled across the otherwise flawless extension of white parchment with such force that the quill had actually poked at least three wholes through the thick paper:

_You've had one week of grace, Severus Snape. You could have **tried**, but you decided not to. _

_Now we are going to do this **my way**: Retreat is **not** an option that's open to you!. Do you understand me?. I'm the other half of this friendship and **I DO ****NOT**** GIVE UP ON MY FRIENDS!.**_

_I'm coming in for Tea. Your office. Five o'clock. You better be there!_

_Yours. Always._

_Harry._

He could not comprehend exactly what in the bloody Hell the boy could possibly mean, at least not at the beginning.

The words swirled before his eyes as he re-read them at least three times before his disbelieving eyes _dared_ to even accept that they were, in fact, clearly written in this note...

He stared, dumbfounded, at the irksome careless handwriting and his insides twisted with dread. Potter... Potter was coming!... He was coming _here:_ to the castle. He... he'd be here in less than six hours with the obvious intention of... _rescuing..._ their doomed friendship from its death-throes...

Severus' heart froze in his chest even as a dizzying wave of almost sickened relief raced trough his every bone. Through his every muscle.

He was horrified and elated in equal measure. He was... frightened enough to throw up!. He could not even begin to describe just how... truly _overwhelming_ he found the very idea of seeing Potter again...

His palms started to sweat and he felt _numb_ with uncharacteristic worry. With distressed self-doubt. With discomfited uncertainty.

He didn't _like_ to be pushed into things. He didn't _appreciate_ to have his misgivings about _this_ ignored. He didn't feel _comfortable_ with this whole situation_..._

Was he really going to sit here, like a meek, chastised child, and accept the auror's highhanded attitude?... Was he truly going to allow James Potter's son to... walk all over him?. Was he really so... _desperate..._ for _friendship_ that he'd ignore his very valid reasons for demanding that they cut their budding relationship short?.

Dark eyes roamed through his office and he found himself alone. So alone...

He had always been a man driven by duty. He had wanted the respect of those around him, based on the things he had accomplished, not on his appearance or the foulness of his temper...

He had always desired to... _triumph._ To be recognized by wizarding society. To be given the accolades that he'd believed to have _earned_ through his efforts.

Now he had all that and more, but... in this last week he'd learned to be quite weary of those around him. It was astonishing to see the change in people. How they hung on to his words. How they looked up to him. How they were clearly in awe to be in his presence...

He'd found it all rather exhausting. Frightening. Uncomfortable. He'd realized that his old dreams had been nothing but blind wishfulness on his part. Envy. Idiocy...

He was not a man made to be on the spotlight. He was not a leader meant to... _encourage_ others into action. He was not wise enough to guide other people. He was just... a man... who had no clue as to what he wanted, a soul who'd lost direction long ago. A frightened, shy youth trapped inside the body of a forty year old adult...

He tried to imagine this strangely _unsatisfying_ existence that he'd been living for the last week stretching endlessly ahead of him, all the way up to the moment of his death, and shuddered. He'd be walking over the very same footsteps that had made him a harsh professor in the past. He was unerringly setting his existence up for another second serving of the same bitter discontentment. Of the same empty... _everything..._

He wanted to do better this time around, but did that truly mean that he should stick with Potter?. Shouldn't he simply try to... _replace..._ the auror with some other person willing to offer him honest friendship, without the messy emotions that the boy had dared to bring into the equation?.

He didn't know who would be willing to step into the gryffindor's shoes, but... he could at the very least _try_ to find that out. If he really, truly, wanted to. The very idea turned his stomach, though. As incomprehensible as it might sound he couldn't _ignore_ the fact that he didn't want another cold and formal friendship. He didn't want some emotionless _arrangement._ He didn't even want a... lukewarm and respectfully polite _sharing_ of company with whomever else he could _lure_ into maintaining some sort of relationship with him...

No matter how much it hurt, dealing with the idea of losing the man altogether still felt like a far easier proposition than the onerous prospect of _trying_ to keep Potter in his life, but... he could now not imagine a fate that was _worse_ than one utterly _devoid_ of the kind of... madness... that Potter excelled at. He couldn't find the strength to reconcile himself to a future that contained only duty...

He was so terrified of ending up exactly were he'd been when he'd first _died_ that he couldn't even _contemplate_ the idea of just... walking away right now. He couldn't bring himself to abandon his office altogether and remain absent from it until such a time as the auror understood that he couldn't be pushed around like a little rag doll...

He was mostly certain that, if he were to follow that particular course of action, the boy would take the hint. No one in his right mind would _persist_ in seeking a friendship that had been so openly and cruelly rejected, only... he missed the child so badly... He'd rattled along the corridors all week long feeling lost and dejected. Lonely... He couldn't throw away the auror's willingness to save their ailing friendship for something as _unimportant_ as a show of almost teenage-like oneupmanship meant to soothe his wounded pride...

If he wanted to... _save..._ whatever might be left of their relationship then he needed the boy's help to get past his own damaging resistance. He needed to accept that Potter... Potter was a much better balanced individual, when it came to things like keeping up and maintaining worthwhile interpersonal relationships with others, than he himself had ever been. The man had had the same group of friends since he was eleven, for goodness sake!.

He'd found himself a whole replacement family within the first few months of arriving at Hogwarts and had managed to keep them in his life, despite the fact that he'd been the most viciously pursued target on the Dark Lord's list...

Potter _knew_ what he was doing, of that Severus had not the slightest doubt. This was a field where the man had actual, _proven_ expertise.

He just had to... _remember..._ that. He had to _follow_ Potter's lead. He had to _swallow_ his pride here and allow Potter to take control of this _thing_ that they were building, or he would end up destroying it altogether out of fear...

The mere thought settled in his gut with the heaviness of a tombstone and he blinked dazed black eyes as his mind whirled. Was he truly thinking of allowing himself to... proceed forwards... with Potter?...

"Dear Salazar, I must be mad!..."

His own whisper broke the heavy silence that surrounded him, startling him into a sudden, instinctive jerk. Potter's note fell to the ground at his feet and he lowered his gaze to stare at it. His eyes settled on the last scrawled sentence, reading the last three words aloud with anxious trepidation:

"Yours. Always. Harry..."

No one had ever promised _him_ such a thing. No one!. He didn't even _know_ if he wanted such a promise to be real. Or if he'd rather... see the boy become another's in a not so distant future...

He had once, a long time ago, allowed himself to develop an unrealistic affection for Mylton Klinius, the absolutely gorgeous captain of the Hufflepuff Quidditch team. Then, during one of the most unfortunate moments of his wretched fourth year, he'd been caught by the boy's teammates sniffling a forgotten scarf that the object of his affections had... _lost._.. in the changing rooms. He'd been subjected to such a cruelly violent punishment, for _daring_ to have those kinds of... _feelings._.. towards the other boy, that he'd never had the nerve to _consider_ the possibility again.

Loving Lily had seemed much _safer_ after that. She'd allowed him to get close enough to her. She had been a caring, lovely girl. She'd been his friend...

Maybe Luc had been onto something when he accused him of being in love with the mere idea of loving her. By now he didn't even know his own mind anymore... He couldn't even _guess_ what he'd do, _how_ he'd feel this afternoon. Or tomorrow. Or a year from today...

By now he only _knew_ that he was afraid, but he felt... _alive._ He felt _excited _for the first time since he'd regained his freedom. He wanted to _try_. Just... try to see if they could indeed salvage at least some of the closeness they had forged.

He wanted to carry on _risking_ his very sanity on Potter and see if the boy could indeed continue to live up to his every promise...

He figured that, if the gryffindor hadn't yet managed to stumble, if he hadn't given up on him altogether, if he'd stuck to this friendship of theirs and was fighting with tooth and nail to keep it safe, then... then it was Severus' turn to attempt to match him.

Faith... he'd match the boy faith for faith. Trust for trust. Courage for courage... He _wanted_ to stay put and _find_ the strength to confront whatever came his way. He wanted to stop hiding among fears. Among shyness. Among the ghosts of his own doubts... He wanted to give himself this one chance...

What he didn't want to do, though, was to hurt Potter. And he wondered which one of them would end up hurting the other the most, when the time to pay for the foolishness of continuing down this dangerous path finally arrived...

TBC...


	30. Chapter 30

_**THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 30.**_

Potter's first visit to the castle was an unmitigated disaster, and so were the second, and the third.

Severus was honest enough to recognize that much of the blame for their failure to... _return..._ to the earlier days of their so called friendship rested mostly on his shoulders, but that didn't stop him from despairing that they'd never manage to repair what had been broken when the child dared to introduce his unwanted confession of affection into the mix.

He desired to return to the feeling of contented ease that he'd once experienced in the company of the gryffindor, but that was just... not possible any longer.

No matter how many times he berated himself for it, he could not relax enough to accept the boy's actions at face value and he was so constantly on edge, trying to analyze Potter's every gesture, every word, every facial expression, that every conversation they attempted soon became an stilted exercise in sheer determination to continue with a task that had lost all of its appeal for the both of them.

The ghost of abject failure hovered over them as cold and friendless as a Dementor. As merciless an enemy as the monstrous creatures themselves and also equally hopeless.

Despite his conscious desire not to do so, he discovered that he jerked away every single time the brat so much as _tried_ to touch him. He reacted rather badly to the auror's proximity, too. And refused, plain and simply, to move away from behind the barricading safety that his desk provided him with.

After the excruciating way in which both of them had just... stared at each other in almost near silence, for forty minutes straight the previous Saturday, Severus had decided to give up. He was reasonably certain that the gryffindor wouldn't show up this week, either. And, in a way, he believed that this outcome was... maybe not exactly what he'd hoped for, but at least it was better than the alternative. He had _tried,_ this time he'd tried his best and it hadn't made a difference in the end...

He could now move on with the knowledge that it hadn't been his fault that things had ended this badly. Not really. He had tried. Really _tried,_ but the friendship had been too damaged to be saved...

He'd chosen poorly this time around and he'd paid the price for it. He'd endured three whole Saturdays of uncomfortable misery and it'd be madness to allow that torture to continue, when it was plain to see that things would never return to the way they used to be.

Decision made, he decided to drown his disappointment in a veritable mountain of paperwork and proceeded to rip letters and sign documents, answer floo-calls and offer the most pointed negative that his cutting tongue could come up with to another batch of mentorship hopefuls, without even bothering to stop to have breakfast. Or lunch. Without really paying attention to any of Draco's protests that he'd hardly seen him recently... Turning a deaf ear to Minnie's worried ranting, about the irresponsibility of working himself into the grave, while his body was supposed to be recovering from the trauma of his long illness...

At some point or other they'd even _dared_ to send Poppy over and he'd growled at her so fiercely that she screamed in his face.

Castle elves came and went, carrying trays of food to and from the kitchen, grumbling under their breath when they found them untouched, but he ignored the whole lot and carried on.

After one of the most irritating weeks he could remember, Saturday finally arrived and, as five o'clock approached, the most awful knot of anxious apprehension began to burn his stomach with the poisonous insidiousness of acid. His forehead started to bead with a truly inexplicable amount of sweat and he shivered, feeling surprisingly cold and tense. Uneasy...

He started to shake so much that his elegant script became visibly affected. It was tilted to the right a bit too much. The clear lines had lost their sharpness and, horror of horrors: there were actual minute deviations from a perfectly straight line that would openly reveal, to any one who'll read this, that his hand had been shamefully unsteady as he wrote...

He was so annoyed with himself that he flung his quill away and a spurt of dark ink sprayed the whole desk in a wide arch. His long fingers rose to pinch the prominent bump on the bridge of his nose with a brutality that threatened to leave nail marks on his pale skin. The explosive sigh that emanated from his painfully constricted chest managed to mask the sudden whoosh of the floo connexion as it became suddenly active so that, for a long second, he wasn't even aware that he had company.

"Severus?"

Potter's unexpected call made him jump. His hand lowered so hastily that he bumped his bony wrist on the edge of the desk and had to grit his teeth in order to swallow the pained groan that rose up the back of his throat.

He was utterly flustered. He was shocked beyond reason at the sheer nervousness that had gripped him upon hearing the boy's voice...

He couldn't understand his own behavior. His own reactions. His own instinctive... _discomfort..._ with everything that had to do with the two of them. His mind whirled and blanked out at the same time, so much so, that he couldn't bring himself to utter a single word. He was perfectly unable to formulate a single clear thought. He seemed to be running on sheer... _anxiety..._

The gryffindor rushed to him. Calloused fingers circling around his wounded wrist with so much gentleness that a lump the size of Russia lodged in Severus' already constricted throat. He was startled by the sheer sense of _comfort_ that the simple touch brought him. By how much he... _valued_ the shadow of concern that darkened the youth's green eyes as they clashed against his own with frowning seriousness.

"I'm sorry if I startled you, Severus, but... you looked as if you were a million miles away"

His heart pounded within his chest with force enough to make him feel quite dizzy. There was a sickening kind of tension settling, like an unmovable rock, in the pit of his stomach and he wondered how it was possible for the child to be _unaware_ of just how much his mere presence affected him...

"I... yes... I'm afraid that I... I've been troubled by work. It'd be best if we _cancel_ our plans for tea and just... call it a day. I have a ton of things to do, Potter." He managed to whisper through the unbearable constriction in his chest and felt like lowering his head in shamed humiliation when the child simply sighed.

"How badly did you hurt your wrist, Severus?"

Dark eyes blinked in dazed discomfort and he attempted to pull his limb free from his companion's gentle grip.

"It's just a little bump. I'm positive that I shall live to see the morning."

The auror ignored him regally and those gentle fingers cradled his bony wrist tenderly, turning it this way and that with disconcerting focus.

"It'll bruise, I think. Do you have any Bruise Healing Paste here or shall I go fetch it from Madam Pomfrey?"

He was horrified by the very idea of sending for Poppy. She'll give him Hell if Potter made her worry about him...

"There's no need for any of that, for Merlin's sake!" He spluttered in discomfited uneasiness.

Fierce green eyes settled on his flushed face with a kind of calm forbearance.

"Just because no one has _bothered_ to look after you properly, so far, doesn't mean that you don't deserve it, Severus. Your wrist is already red. I can see that it'll swell in the next few hours... It's no skin off my nose to slap some bloody healing paste on it, in order to make it better, for goodness sake!. There's no need for you to become this defensive over it, you know?"

The gentleness of the rebuke affected him far more powerfully than straightforward frustration would have done. He floundered under the look the boy gave him, feeling awkward enough to flush under the disconcerting amount of sheer tenderness that was being directed towards him.

"Accio Light Bruise Healing Paste!" He whispered slowly after a second, praying to the founders for this to be one of those times when his magic actually responded to his command, instead of subjecting him to the most awful sense of failure. He didn't know if he could bear the humiliation of being shown to be more squib than wizard in front of the boy...

His wand responded only fleetingly and it was clear to him, almost at once, that he was doomed to suffer the indignity of having failed to summon his own bloody potion from the next room. Abject misery clouded his every thought and his already black eyes dulled with the most distressed sense of unbearable shame. He was _unable_ to sustain the steady green gaze that was intently focused on him and his head lowered, utterly mortified, towards the floor.

A beat of silence followed as his eyes closed and his heart just... froze.

Then Potter's too-warm hand abandoned his wrist completely and he felt those careful fingers card through the long tresses of his hair with the delicate gentleness of utter, undisguised devotion.

"It's getting better, Severus. I know that you don't believe me, but... I actually sensed your power in the room for a brief second. You just need some more time and a little patience... Then we'll see you going around this old place, putting the fear of Snape into all the little miscreants that are running amok all over your school..."

The words failed so completely to comfort him that he couldn't even manage a weak snort. The moment stretched and stretched. A thick tension rose between them both as the boy waited for some sort of response that he felt utterly unprepared to deliver.

After a second or two a sigh rent the air. It was deep and it was bitter. It was nervous, broken, harsh... Potter's hand curled around his head and carefully proceeded to pull on his hair, forcing his face upwards until they both stared at one another in the quiet of the office.

The smile that graced the auror's lips was a brave thing. A pink slash of tender sorrow. A lovely gift meant to soothe Severus' own unbearable disappointment with himself.

"Why don't we try it together, Severus?. You do the casting and I... I'll boost your power with my own. Wouldn't you prefer that over having me summon the thing myself?"

A truly terrible sense of imminent danger engulfed his every sense then. He could not cope with the delicate nuances of... further, indisputable intimacy that lay hidden in that simple offer of help. Magic performance was something truly private to every wizard. One's power belonged to no one but oneself for the whole of a witch or wizard's life. To... _share..._ something so personal with another in any shape or form could be considered, in many ways, to be just as _intimate_ an act as engaging in sexual intercourse...

"I don't think..." He began to answer, only to be silenced by the gentle pressure of Potter's index finger over is cold lips.

"Ssshhh!. Why don't you stop _thinking,_ for once, and accept this one thing that I _want_ to give you?. It's only an accio spell. There's nothing so complicated about it at all. It'll be over in a blink, you'll see, and then I'll even let you forget that it ever happened, if you want. Just... let me give you _this, _please."

He felt broken by the longing contained in that last word. Utterly undone by the very shattered brightness that had taken over the verdant magnificence of those jewel-colored eyes, hinting at the nearness of tears. He did not want to see this child cry because of him. He could not understand his own dislike of that idea, but it certainly was twisting his insides into an unbearable agony of guilt...

He pushed his pale face away. Lips retreating from all contact with the gryffindor's silencing finger in a move that made them both exhale with tension. Potter looked ready to scream and Severus simply... turned his head away, towards the half opened door that lead into his bedroom, and closed his dark eyes as if in pain.

After a second or two he felt the boy's determined hand curl around the fist with which he was clutching his own wand and his lips tightened in horror at what this child was trying to do here. No one else had ever offered _him_ a gift such as this one...

"Potter... boosting someone else's magic is an act that has very specific connotations in the magical world" He protested gruffly. His alarmed dark eyes fixed on that young and determined face with urgent desperation. He _needed_ to make the child understand!.

"This is the kind of act that _mothers_ perform on behalf of their children. Or a partner grants the other in times of great need, of illness... I can not accept such thing from _you. _That would be tantamount to... _acknowledging_ you as my..." His voice halted mid-sentence as his own inability to say the words finally rendered him mute. His eyes widened and his cheeks flushed in rattled agitation. His throat constricted with the most god-awful tension and he swallowed uneasily, feeling utterly exposed and perfectly at a loss in the devastated little silence that ensued.

Potter came around his chair and knelt beside it, forcing him to look down at his face despite his very obvious reluctance to do so. The boy was pale and serious. Determined. He looked beautifully fragile and magnificently strong at the same time...

"I love you, Severus Snape. I admit to the existence of that one emotion freely. I'll defend it from those who'd dare to threaten it and I'll show it to you, and to all others, in every way that I can. I _want_ to share myself with you!. I want to do it of my own free will and with no strings attached...

You don't have to feel _guilty_ about taking what I can't wait for you to take!. Don't you see that I'll give _this_ to no one else?... I _know_ that you are trying to protect me, but the truth is that you can't. I don't _want_ to be protected!. I don't want to forget you, or _this..._ I'm going to love _you_ no matter how much, or how little, you give me...

I _promise_ you that you can accept this without worrying that I'll make it into something other than... just a spot of help you agreed to let me lend you. Nothing less, Severus, but also nothing more than that..."

He was shocked by the strength of his own reactions, by the horrible uncertainty that suddenly gripped him. By the fact that he experienced joy, relief and just... sheer exultant _pleasure_ from the uncalled for avowal of devotion that he'd just received...

Wasn't this _monstrous_ of him?. Wasn't it _greedy?._ Didn't it make him into the sort of man who'd take, and take, and then take some more, without ever bothering to offer some sort of acknowledgement in return?. Wasn't this the kind of creature the Dark Lord himself had been? Or his own father?...

Ebony colored eyes flashed with the most abject of fears.

"I do not _deserve_ this, Potter..." He whispered with a broken and terrible finality.

The boy smiled at him sweetly. Callused hand coming up to cradle his own gently. Curling his own long, potion-tainted fingers determinedly around his pale birch wand.

"Of course you deserve it, my love. You deserve this and more... You just can't see it yet. This is just... a paltry wand-trick, Severus. There's nothing so momentous about it. Come on... say the words... your wrist is about as swollen as a Pixie's head and you are still arguing with me, you impossible man!..."

He swallowed then, drained of all fight by the sheer devotion that he'd heard in every single word. By the longing, so fierce and proud and utterly generous that was tainting those green eyes with a bright joy. He felt both humbled and honored at the same time. He felt painfully weak and also truly strong in that one moment. He felt equally worthy and perfectly undeserving of all the things that this one man wanted to give him...

The wand lifted as the boy directed his hand. Warm palm blessing his stone-cold skin with the auror's own heat. Their fingers linked together and Severus lost himself in the unfathomable beauty of a pair of green eyes that seemed to want to hold him until the very end of time...

He felt the boy's unstoppable power curse through their fingers. Potter's warm and familiar magic danced across his nerve-endings with all the contentment of a young puppy returning home after it's first trip outside. His own strength surged forth slowly, rising to meet this foreign energy with a cautious, wary curiosity. Both powers merged and his wand trembled under the onslaught of their combined magic.

"Accio Light Bruise Healing Paste!" He heard his own voice whisper the spell aloud, as if through a thick veil made out of terror and confusion. Of elation, hope and fear. Made out of reckless daring and instinctive caution. Made out of utterly disorienting uncertainty...

Despite his weak pronunciation the magic was strong. Determined. Flawless. It reacted just as it was meant to do, bringing the pale blue container that held his healing paste floating across the room, straight towards them. He was invaded by a strange, unique sensation of sheer triumph and utter surrender at the same time. He'd never been one half of a pair before this moment. This was a magical union, no matter how brief. They were one for this brief instant in time. Two very different human entities utterly _fused_ into absolute perfection. Something unique and _theirs._ Something just... _precious..._

When the jar hit their fingers the spell broke and his wand sagged against his sweaty palm, unresponsive once more. He started to tremble with utmost distress. Perfectly unable to cope with the notion that he... he'd been _one_ with Harry Potter and now... now he was back to being... _alone..._ Again!...

The boy held him very tightly for a second. He was silent. He was warm. He seemed determined and calm.

"It's alright, Severus... It's alright!. I'm here, you see? I'm right _here!."_

It was a second or two before he understood that there were tears in his eyes. Twin trails of overwhelmed misery were running down his ashen face, leaving behind a crystalline path of wet fire that his companion was trying tirelessly to dry. He was so... _uncomfortable_ with his own emotional reaction that he shut his eyes too tightly. Turned his head abruptly away. Attempted to retreat...

A rueful chuckle rent the air and he all but jumped when he felt the boy's careful fingers curl around his bruised wrist with utter gentleness.

"You are always so defensive, so reluctant... It's like trying to goad a suspicious hippogryph into a formal bow..."

He was startled by that utterly moronic comparison.

"Hippogryphs are creatures of great pride, Potter. I don't think anyone with two neurons to rub together would ever imagine that I have reason enough to be proud about anything!"

Potter dared to shrug his wide shoulders, seemingly unaffected by the scathing glare that Severus had directed towards him. He was busy opening the paste jar and sticking his fingers inside of it, scooping a generous amount of the thick cream into his fingers. The boy proceeded then to apply it carefully into the swollen skin of his bony wrist with so much focused attention that Severus felt himself flush anew. He was unbalanced by the roller-coaster of emotions that he'd just been put through. He was tired and he felt vulnerable. He _disliked_ the feeling of being utterly out of control that he was experiencing...

He was more than merely appalled by the actual strength of the emotions that were cramping his stomach into a wild mass of thick knots, and he felt honestly unprepared to deal with any of it. He was truly terrified. He was more than ready to... _retreat..._ into his shell and remain there for all eternity: safe in the knowledge that he'd be unreachable. Soothed by the fact that he'd be spared all this riot of... _feelings_ and _confusion._ Of paralyzing guilt. Of terrifying _longing._..

"Hippogryphs are only proud because they are afraid, Severus. They are deeply insecure creatures at heart, I think. They are too self-conscious to relax their tightly held guard and that is why their behavior is so unapproachable most of the time... They are willing to _try, _though_._ It's just _hard_ for them to do so.

You, on the other hand... are _both_ insecure and reluctant. I don't know if you were always this way, but... that's how I see you right now. I'm trying to move us forwards and you are resisting me at every step of the way. I can see that you are afraid. I can see how badly I'm pushing you...

I do _understand_ your need to withdraw, even if I don't always acknowledge it. I wish I could. I really, _really_ wish you were the kind of man I could trust not to retreat out of... mere fear. But you are not. You just... aren't!.

That's a reality that we'll both have to learn to deal with. Because I am neither leaving nor willing to allow you to _hide_ yourself away from _us._ From what we could become _together._ From a future that might, just might, finally make you happy..."

He was shocked by the brat's daring little rant. By the boldness of the admission he'd just heard. By the fact that Potter meant to... _continue_ with his useless _quest_ to change his mind on the matter of where this relationship of theirs was heading...

"You can't make me love you out of sheer pigheadedness, Potter!. That is not how emotions work... I've told you _this_ before: you'll get nothing but mere _friendship_ out of me. _Nothing_!. Keeping up unreasonable hopes to the contrary will only hurt your feelings in the end!"

Potter's smile was a crooked thing.

"Whoever said I'm not talking about friendship, Severus?. You've been truly unsettled this past weeks. You are plainly reluctant to spend time alone in my company.

You've refused to get out of this office every single time that I've suggested it, limiting our interactions to stilted, painfully awkward dissertations on the weather over cooling cups of tea...

You've been trying to _sabotage_ what little is left of the beautiful thing that we found together. Don't you dare trying to deny it!. Wasn't that what all that rubbish about you being too busy for our tea-date really meant?"

He stiffened in affronted defensiveness:

"They are not _dates,_ Potter. They are... they are... _meetings!_"

Those green eyes flashed with frustration.

"That, right there, is exactly what's wrong with us, Severus!. You are now so spooked about my feelings for you that you are trying to _label_ our relationship to death!. Does it really matter if we have dates or meetings?. We get to spend some time together. We should try to build on _that,_ instead of getting bogged down on definitions!"

His heart clenched with discontent as his gaze clashed with bright green. So much green... So much brightness... Darkly-lashed eagerness brimming with sheer hope...

"I don't _want_ to hurt you, Potter. I'm trying to make sure that you understand exactly what this is" He chocked out, impatiently.

There was laughter then. A mirthless, truly brittle sound that Severus hated with all of his heart.

"I _know_ exactly what this is, Severus. You don't have to try and kill it with your _labels, _at least not on my account...

Why don't we leave the names out of this altogether?. I promise you it won't harm me. Or you!... Don't you see that we are trying so hard to protect one another that we are losing it all?"

The question echoed around the room with such great desperation that it touched something deep and truly wounded within him. Something that reminded him sharply of the boy he'd been so long ago. Begging Lily for that last chance that she'd never gave him... He felt the sharpness of that memory dig into his consciousness and bury itself there. He felt the uneasiness it caused him spread like a cold sweat all over him.

"I don't _know_ how to do that, Potter. I can't just... turn my misgivings on and off as if they are all wired to a muggle switch..." He retorted finally. Voice turned hoarse with the awful awareness that he'll fail the boy here, in exactly the same way that Lily had failed his own teenage self...

A smile brightened the features of the gryffindor and warm fingers held his own so tightly that they hurt for a brief second. Potter blinked up at him and whispered eagerly:

"Don't give up, Severus!. Don't try to put us into a box. Other than that... I think we are going to be _fine,_ as long as you remember that I'm here to stay and make the effort to, at least, meet me half-way...

If _you_ allow me entry I'll do the rest, I promise you... Neither of us will come to harm here, not from _this!._.."

TBC...


	31. Chapter 31

_**THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 31.**_

Autumn came and went, leaving behind just memories of warmth. Winter arrived with a harsh, almost savage eagerness that forced them all to spend their time indoors. Severus' routine began to settle into a more sedated rhythm as the school's familiar pattern of heavy workload during the week and Hogsmeade weekends, of Quidditch matches and injured players, of detentions to be assigned and exams to mark, of endless paperwork... began to take over the initial restlessness with which he'd joined the staff and, after a while, it seemed as if he'd never been away from the Head's office. He grew used to the sight of Albus' portrait once again. To his whispered commentaries from the wall behind his chair.

He grew used to treating Minnie not as his natural superior but as his subordinate. A helping hand willing to stand in whenever he felt the need to avoid a particular task. Or a person. Or both...

Eventually the students became used to his presence among them. Professors began to come to him in search of both advice or action regarding one or other trouble, instead of turning to Minerva as if by instinct. With every day that passed his life at Hogwarts became easier to deal with and he felt calmer. Safer. More in control.

Evenings belonged to him and Potter, though. The boy had returned to his job midway through his vacation, alleging boredom. He'd invariably fire-call Severus from his home the moment he finished with dinner and they spent hour upon hour chatting through the flames about how very differently their day had panned out.

Severus had been initially wary of this development. Unused, as he was, to _share_ his thoughts with others. He saw the situation as a very personal intimacy, one that he'd shared with no one else before this man had come into his life and turned it inside out.

He'd been reluctant to _indulge_ the brat in this, but had been ultimately unable to sway him. It sometimes frightened him how easily he'd grown used to Potter's calls. He now waited for them almost anxiously. Found himself smiling, at some point or other during the day, and reminding himself to tell this or that to Harry.

Harry... that was another thing that had happened almost without him noticing it. He couldn't really pinpoint the exact moment when his lips had dared to drop proper formality but the truth is that they had done so. He'd woken up one day with the thought that he shouldn't really call a dear friend of his by the same name he'd once called a bitter enemy and the idea had become reality from there. A name meant only to be used within the privacy of his own mind became a whispered address, voiced aloud by mistake, that had gained him the most brilliant smile he'd ever seen. And so it was that he'd never recanted his right to call the child by his given name and now they were Severus and Harry to each other.

He tried hard not to think about what it was exactly that they were doing, or where it might end up leading them in the end... he hoped, for the sake of them both, that Potter was correct and neither of them suffered too badly. But alone, in the silence of his empty, lovingly restored chambers, he stared straight into the darkness and shivered with unease...

They were growing closer. Too close. He was starting to learn to count on the auror for everything. To assume that Harry would be there, beside him, no matter what his plans were or how little actual warning he gave the boy about them...

The gryffindor seemed to live inside his fireplace these days and he... he could not imagine now spending a single evening without enjoying the comfort of that welcome company. These days he had something that he'd never had before. He had... _someone..._ for the very first time. Someone who was _his._ Someone _genuine._ Someone who desired only company and had absolutely no agenda to fulfill by befriending him.

The idea that he was just... a mere breath away from crossing past that unmovable line of formal friendship that he'd drawn in his mind, the mere possibility of _acknowledging_ that they... they now _knew_ and _shared_ so much about each other, _with_ each other, that they couldn't in good conscience be defined simply as friends, kept him awake at night. It worried him. It frightened him. It was circling his thoughts constantly, driving him spare...

It had rattled him enough to refuse coming to this reception as the boy's companion, in what he already suspected had been a totally useless attempt to delay what he now saw as... _inevitable._ He was trying to resist the boy so hard... he was holding on to a belief that had started to crumble. He was trying to remain the same man he'd always been, yet he was discovering with every passing day that _that_ man was dead and gone. He had no desire for that old and bitter version of himself to return, either. He felt finally _free and..._ cared for. He was being _cherished_ for the very first time in his life and he absolutely adored the feeling. He could not, would not, relinquish it now. He didn't really want to imagine the horror of having to return to any sort of life that was devoid of... Harry.

"Severus?"

He startled upon hearing Minnie's call and looked up from the plate he'd been firmly contemplating for the last half hour or so. She smiled at him with so much understanding that he flushed and then proceeded to look surreptitiously around the packed room, in order to determine just how many people had been witness to his... _lapse._

There was an awful sort of silence around him and he swallowed down his anxious agitation as he finally realized that every single eye in the blasted place was fixed firmly on him.

His face flushed even harder and he failed miserably in his half-hearted attempt to look relaxed.

From across the table Luc was frowning at him, beautiful features arranged into the impenetrable mask he always wore whenever he felt the need to project a truly impressive facade of polished neutrality. Next to him Draco's blond eyebrows were shooting upwards pointedly. His godson's beautiful eyes were darting towards the left discreetly, indicating the High Table where Rodolphus Curlieu, the pompously insipid Minister of Magic had been seated throughout this whole insupportable ordeal. The bloody man had apparently decided to come to a stand while everybody else was engaged with the daunting task of consuming the elaborate concoction that had been served for desert and was turned, champagne flute in hand, towards Severus' own table.

His eyes narrowed on the smiling face of the suave politician as a wave of sudden understanding finally hit him and he jerked his head towards the man in a minute and very sharp formal acknowledgement.

The whole room seemed to sigh with barely contained relief and every single person present rose to their feet and burst into frenzied applause. He was so shocked by this unexpected development that it took him a second or two before his befuddled brain urged him to come to his feet too. He'd just pushed his heavy chair backwards with the intention of rising, like everybody else, when he felt Minnie's touch settling carefully on his shoulder. A mere blink later she'd bent down to whisper in his ear:

"Don't, Severus!. I know you were lost in your own thoughts during the minister's speech. How could you sit there and completely miss the whole of your own homage, I'll never understand... But this is for _you_, too. You stay right where you are and _smile._ Let the rest of us honor you in this very small way."

After that whispered instruction she rejoined the masses in the thunderous delivery of one of the most appallingly long sessions of applause that he'd ever been forced to endure. The longer it lasted, the more uncomfortable that he became, and he was reasonably certain that his face must have acquired both: the rigidity of a wax statue and the color of a half cooked lobster, as he sat in his chair, like a stupid but well dressed lump, and smiled weakly for what felt like an absolute _eternity._ He was beyond _mortified._ He was utterly flustered by the unwelcome attention that was centered solely on his person. He'd have given quite a lot to be able to disappear in a puff of smoke from the ceremony, leaving all these people behind to... _torment._.. somebody else.

At long last the ovation died down and he was relieved to see some of the attendees return to their seats. Minnie lowered herself back on to her chair and turned around slightly to stare straight at him with an unholy light in her lovely brown eyes.

"The last time I saw you squirm this much, you've just won the International Golden Cauldron Award for the development of the Delayed-Action Numbing Solution."

He shuddered at the memory and she laughed. Mirth spilling from her lips, her eyes, her whole demeanor, as the rest of their companions also returned to their table and tuned in to the conversation without a shred of shame.

"I remember that. He came home swearing to abandon his potions research projects unless he was assured by the Potioneers Guild that he wouldn't be _required_ to appear in person to another award ceremony..." Luc's recollection sparked a lively discussion on the topic of his apparently _incomprehensible _refusal to acknowledge every single accolade that he'd been granted in his professional field since that first time.

Pomona and Fillius joined in with their own set of stories and then Poppy had the gall of describing for her very amused audience how he'd faked being ill with Wallancing Fever, in order to avoid having to attend his own inclusion into the Extraordinary Brewer's Wall of Fame.

"I can't believe you didn't bother going to that one, Godfather. You are the only person on that wall who got his name on it while they were still _alive._ Never mind the fact that you managed to get there at twenty five... Honors like that don't come every day to the rest of us, mere mortals. I can't get my head around your dislike for this kind of occasions. It's just dinner and a few speeches...

You've no idea of how strangely people look at me, whenever I point out that it was you who trained me. It's like admitting to have seen Merlin himself. Everybody knows your name, but no one has actually _seen_ you... At least not in the international circles."

He was certain that his face was ruby-red. His skin was burning with the awareness that his friends and colleagues had decided to poke fun at his small... _idiosyncrasy._.. and he couldn't help but resenting their good humor.

"Potion brewing is not about prizes, or accolades, or any other kind of similar nonsense, Draco. I have no interest whatsoever in being hounded by brainless idiots in some ridiculously overpriced venue that has no actual brewing facilities. I can spend that very time sconced in my lab doing actual work, you see?. I'm happy enough to leave the trappings of fame to the likes of Gilderoy Lockhart.

As long as I have the respect of my colleagues and the time to... _tinker..._ with my brews, I'll contribute to the development of our field but I refuse to be... _paraded..._ through one insufferable conference after another, no matter what Greysone Rogers has to say about it..."

Draco's gray eyes narrowed then and a sigh escaped his lips as the rest of their companion's titters settled.

"He's absolutely peeved at you, Godfather. I'm certain that he'll strangle you in your sleep one of these days unless you answer at least one of his letters. He's written to both, father and me, begging us to convince you to reconsider your stance on those mentorship applications. I'll bet my next year's salary that he's contacted Minerva, too. Hasn't he?"

A terrifyingly gryffindorish smirk blossomed across Minnie's lips.

"He did _try._ You know how persistent he can be... It's not as if I could ignore the head of the British Mastery Guild of Potioneers and Alchemists, at least not when he sends official requests to be acknowledged as a secondary provider for the very mentorship requests that you were not even aware Hogwarts was receiving on your behalf, Severus. I even tried my best to convince the applicants to send their requests to him. It's not my fault that they don't _want_ to study under any other British master, for Merlin's sake!..."

"The man is an absolute menace. He tried to barge his way into your room while you were still in your coma. He started to shake you, screaming at you to stop faking and accept some of your responsibilities for the good of the Guild!. I had to get Harry to throw him out on his ear..." Poppy commented indignantly from the other end of the table.

"You've got to agree that having Severus accept a few selected applicants would be good not only for Hogwarts, but also for the whole national potions community.

I can certainly see the man's point, even if I disagree with the tactics he's been employing to achieve his goals" Luc butted in with a serious tone of voice that reminded them all of the fact that Rogers had actually brought his complains directly to the school's board of governors, in the hope of having them force Severus to at least _pick_ an apprentice.

"I'm surprised he hasn't shown up yet, Godfather. With you refusing to see him to discuss the matter, I'd have thought that your Order of Merlin ceremony would be his best bet to force you into a confrontation. It's not as if it hasn't been widely publicized that the minister has finally managed to make you agree to put in an appearance..."

"_Blackmailed_ me to show my face, more like, Draco. He got Edwardson on my case, for Salazar's sake!. One doesn't get to disagree with Max's directives about what is expected from the school's Headmaster... That's just calling for more trouble than the alternative is worth."

For a second they all looked at each other with strangely calculating expressions.

"So... you'll take on the mentorships if Rogers convinces Max to include your continuing role in a docent position, at least when it comes to the potions field, as a requirement of the job?"

He frowned at the question. Troubled dark eyes settled on the disconcertingly dazzling shape of the Order Of Merlin's, First class, that hung from a Slytherin-green ribbon over his narrow chest. He'd been

forced into attending the ministry's award ceremony in spite of his own very vocal refusal to do so. The Head of the school's governors insistence had been crucial in getting him here. He'd never had attended this stupid ball of his own free will. But he'd never before imagined that a man like Max Edwardson would actually listen to Rogers' ridiculous demands. Albus hadn't taught a single class since the moment he became headmaster and the same could be said for every single witch or wizard that had preceded him.

"What are the chances of the board deciding to get involved, Luc?. I thought the matter would be brushed under the carpet, if not outright ignored, as soon as the board met. The Mentorship applications are directed to me as a potioneer. They have nothing whatsoever to do with the school itself"

Minnie's hand on his sleeve brought his attention back to her. Deep brown eyes studied his pale face seriously as she pointed out the obvious:

"Some of those applicants are offering a veritable king's ransom in donations to the Hogwarts funds. Then there are the charges that could be applied for food and board. For providing them with ingredients and reading material. We are talking _thousands_ of galleons per applicant, Severus..."

He felt cold down to his toes at the very idea. He was absolutely convinced that he couldn't teach another to the same standard that he'd taught Draco... He'd had complete control over his godson's studies in the field from the very beginning. He hadn't had to compete with other teachers styles or views of what was important enough to be taught and what didn't even deserve to be mentioned in passing... He'd had a blank canvas to mold into what he considered to be the very best potions brewer that he could possibly produce. He'd never have that same advantage with another pupil. Never have the same kind of undisputed trust. The same kind of rapport...

Just as he was about to open his mouth and demand a clear answer from Luc the music started. A quartet had appeared on the podium and was now busily engaged in performing a very sedated Waltz that brought half of his companions to their feet.

"Will you care for a dance, Severus?" Minnie prompted him eagerly and his eyes widened in such a comical rendition of pure panic that she patted him maternally on the shoulder and chuckled under her breath.

"Don't look at me so worriedly, my friend. I'm sure Fillius will take me out for a spin, if you'd rather sit than twirl me around the ballroom. But I do hope to see you out there, for a change. Albus used to say that you moved like a man who knew how to dance..."

He was so flustered by that totally unexpected remark about him knowing how to dance that he couldn't bring himself to look at her. His dark head turned around, searching for the charms professor, and a sigh of sheer gratefulness left his lips when he saw that the man had already risen and was in the process of offering his small hand to Minerva. They both left soon afterwards, laughing quietly at him for his reticence, but he didn't begrudge them their amusement. He knew that he was notorious for his rigid reluctance to... _engage._.. in most acts of frivolity. Albus had constantly berated him for it and so had most of his colleagues over the years. This was nothing truly new, it was just _strange_ to have this kind of scene taking place somewhere other than Hogwarts.

With a rueful shake of his head he forced his fingers to reach for the slender cup of apple juice that he'd been sipping from all evening and decided to wait here for the rest of his party to return so that they all could go back to the school together. His eyes roamed over the room and his brow furrowed as he spied a truly worrying amount of people heading towards his now empty table. He'd barely had time enough to prepare himself for the coming ordeal when the first eager... _fan._.. descended upon him with all the passionate eagerness of the most fervent of hunters, catching sight of a prized wild beast.

Three agonizingly long hours later Severus knew that he was hiding, but he couldn't _curve_ his instinctive need to shy away from the horrifyingly embarrassing ordeal of having to walk around the ministry ballroom, cheerfully accepting all manner of truly over-the-top shows of appreciation for his apparently unparalleled contributions to British Wizarding Society.

His Order of Merlin Ceremony had attracted an absolutely astonishing number of well wishers. Everyone who was _anyone_ in the Wizarding World seemed to have descended on to the crowded room in order to honor him tonight. He was not really enjoying the disturbing... _eagerness_... of the various politicians and other social climbers. Wasn't enjoying the intensely discomfiting scrutiny of the likes of Rita Skeeter or Julianne Ryosling, both of them well-known sharks, who dedicated their lives to... rip... people apart with the destructive tip of their venomous quills.

There was a veritable sense of jubilant welcome in the way most people treated him and he couldn't get over the idea that he could be quite this _well_ _regarded_ outside of Hogwarts.

Finally, utterly desperate to avoid further discomfort, he'd abandoned his own table with the excuse of having to make use of the facilities and ended up literally cowering behind the biggest potted plant that he could find. He _knew _that it was a shameful act of utterly spineless cowardice on his part, but... By Merlin!... He'd had enough of this _nonsense_ already.

His dark eyes roamed over the brightly lit ballroom with the kind of longing that only those who have spent an entire lifetime being a wallflower can possibly understand. The music was lovely. So lovely...

There was laughter out there and... joy. There was twirling and beauty. There was dancing...

He'd never, ever, been invited to dance by anyone who hadn't offered him the chance out of pity. Or friendship. Or both...

"So _this_ is where you've been hiding all along. I'll have you know that I've been searching for you, like a bloody idiot, for well over an hour, Severus!"

He'd been so concentrated in his own self-pitying thoughts that he hadn't realized that he'd been spotted. His brow furrowed in the most displeased scowl that he could produce and he turned around to address his unwelcome companion. Every single thought froze in his mind the moment his gaze settled on Harry. His eyes widened and his lips parted in astonished surprise. He could not ever recall having seen the boy looking quite this... elegant.

"Potter... You... you look... _incredible._ How on Earth did you manage to tame that horrible mop of hair?" He gasped aloud, in utter shock, and a smile that was as mischievous as it was pleased curved his friend's lips.

"Insulting my poor hair is really bad form, Severus. I was born with it, you know?. It's kind of... a natural reflexion of my own rebellious nature, I think."

He just gaped at the auror in absolute befuddlement. He could not actually reconcile this... absolutely perfectly turned-out gentleman with the messy and careless creature that he'd grown to associate the boy with.

"I didn't mean to insult you, Harry. It's just that... I hardly recognize you under all of that... polish"

Laughter curved those lips upwards and he finally saw a glimpse of the man he'd grown accustomed to seeing in the gentleman beside him.

"I'm afraid that _this_ is only for tonight, Severus. Tomorrow I'll be back to my usual disastrous self."

For some reason he disliked that particular comment with a passion that surprised him.

"There's nothing wro_n_g with your usual self!" He snapped sharply and then blushed a bright crimson color when he found himself on the receiving end of a genuinely surprised look.

"Are you alright, Severus?. You seem to be... awfully _unsettled_. Is all of this attention getting to you already?. It's only been a few hours since you arrived, you know?. There's no way that I can get you out of here this early on..."

Harry's callused palm settled on his arm and he gritted his teeth fiercely in an effort not to snap at the boy further. He was extremely uncomfortable with the touch. With the certainty that the child was attempting to... comfort him, in the very same way he liked to do while they were both together in his office. Severus was not accustomed to acknowledge his own emotions in so open a way and what was perfectly fine for him to accept, in the privacy of their meetings together, wasn't quite so welcome while they were _both_ stuck in such a public venue.

"Severus? Is there something wrong?" Obviously concerned fingers tugged on his sleeve, looping gently around his wrist, and his eyes lowered to stare at those digits. He was fighting a losing battle with himself. Fully aware that he'd promised the child that he'd _try_ to meet him half way when they met here tonight, but finding himself absolutely _unable_ to do so.

"I... I do not _want._.. I'm having trouble with you _touching_ me in public, Harry..." He finally forced those words out, through gritted teeth, and could have banged his head against the wall when a veritable storm of sheer hurt painted shadows on the brightness of his friend's emerald eyes.

"_Why_? I touch you like this all the time"

His chest seized with unbearable hurt when the child released him as if he'd been burned. There was something very much like abject disappointment crashing against the tightly controlled walls of his hard-earned self-control. He _liked_ the neat and logical constrains of his own formally rigid behavior.

He felt safe within the distance he liked to keep between himself and all others, it helped him feel in control... Now, though, seeing how his stubborn insistence in adhering to his own general rules of public behavior had just harmed the gryffindor so deeply, a truly choking knot seized his drying throat and he wondered, with a flash of vexed self-awareness, what exactly it was that he wanted from the man in front of him.

He'd never bothered to hide his affection towards Draco. Although he was never particularly attentive to Luc, Cissy or even Minnie... They were all people who knew his limitations. Who had accepted long ago the fact that there was a side of him that they would only ever see in private...

Harry wasn't quite like any of them. He wasn't made for living in any sort of duality. He was straightforward and open in everything he did. He was a book that held no secrets... Severus understood that he needed to make up his mind about where on Earth it was that they were heading and how far was he willing to open up, in order to keep the boy... content.

Did he _want_ Potter to withdraw or to persevere?. Was his own insistent protesting against the possibility of finally recognizing that he could very well see himself growing even closer to the boy his true opinion on the matter or was that just mere... _uncertainty._.. speaking?. Did he really _believe_ that he could learn to love Harry someday with the same sort of devotion that the boy showered him with?... And even if he did, did he actually have the _courage_ to recognize such a thing out loud, to try and seize it?.

Did he _genuinely_ want Harry to forget him altogether or was he actually selfish enough to desire being the sole focus of the gryffindor's affections, without the added pressure of having to offer... _anything..._ in return?. All these questions fleeted through his mind as he stood there, gazing straight into those darkened green eyes that held more hurt and confusion than he could possibly bear to have caused this young man.

"I don't know why you put up me, Harry" He finally whispered in dismayed self-deprecation, and felt himself almost jump with terrified trepidation when the boy smiled at him with so much sweetness that it was _impossible_ to mistake the devoted affection in those eyes for anything other than... plain and simple love.

"You are too hard on yourself, Severus. It's okay for you to be... whatever it is that you are being at the moment. I should have known that my touchy-feely approach to friendship would make you uncomfortable in public. I actually _knew_ that. It's just... hard for me to remember that you are not like Ron and Hermione. You are much more restrained than anyone I've ever been friends with before, that's why we are both sort of... stumbling... a bit.

We are making progress, though, even if you are far too mad with yourself right now to realize it. I'm so proud of the fact that you came out and told me what was wrong, without me having to drag it out of you with thumbscrews, that I feel as if I could break into song right now..."

"Please, don't!" Horrified black eyes clashed against amused green and his breath caught in his chest when Harry laughed.

"You are so easy to rile up... I love to see you getting all flustered with the horror of imagining that I'll shame you. As if I could. As if I _would.._.

You need to relax and forget about all others for a while, Severus. No matter how embarrassing you think it'll be, the truth is that even if I were to sing at the top of my voice right now everyone would have forgotten that I ever did it by tomorrow.

You can't _push_ yourself inside a box just to keep everyone else happy, that'll only lead you to despair. Self-consciousness can be more of a hindrance than an asset in some ways. And I think that you have so much of it that you are becoming _trapped_ by it's chains..."

Long black hair swung forwards to obscure his pale profile when he turned his face away from that disturbingly intent gaze. He'd told the child many times how uncomfortable he felt with this kind of conversations, but Harry tended to ignore him when it suited him. Or when he felt there was something that needed to be said, despite Severus' own reluctance to even hear it.

His dark eyes surveyed the joyous crowd that filled the brightly lit room once again. The same kind of longing that he'd always struggled hard to ignore came back to haunt him and he allowed Harry's strangely appropriate words to touch the deep wounds inside of him that wanted to force him into self-protective denial.

This was _his_ party, thrown in his honor by the ministry itself, and he was _hiding_ behind a potted plant while all his friends danced the night away... It had always been like this for him. Always!.

No matter what the occasion for frivolous celebration was, he'd invariably become a lonely wall-flower while everyone around him joked and twirled under the enchanted lights in time with the gentle music.

There had never been someone willing to take him out onto the floor and he'd never felt comfortable enough to _allow_ one of his well-meaning friends to engage him in a dance being offered out of pity... That's why he'd never bothered to accept Minnie's or even Cissy's attempts to draw him out. He had wanted his first time out there to be all about... romance. He had wanted it to be about... magic and affection. He had wanted to dance while his heart pounded with hope and there was no fear of trickery filling his distrustful mind with dark suspicions...

Suddenly he felt chocked with the need to be out there: feeling, for one second, the easy joy of finding himself held in another's embrace... _Daring_ to sway gently around the ballroom while the chords of the violins cast a spell upon his senses... He had always liked the beauty of classical music. He'd used to dance with an invisible, imaginary partner, many years ago. Back when he'd been still a gangly, shy student whom nobody ever invited to the Yule Ball. The boy whose invitation was always rejected in favor of another's. The snake no one had wanted...

"Severus? Are you all right?"

Harry's concerned voice brought him out of his own maudlin thoughts and he blinked hastily. He was dismayed by the discovery that his eyes were burning with the effort of containing a distressed flow of enraged, self-pitying tears.

A gasp broke across his lips as his companion's fingers curled again around his bony wrist, in an effort to force him to turn his head around once more and confront the worry that he knew must be clearly imprinted on the auror's green gaze.

He resisted the boy's effort with a shamed, reluctant obstinacy that gained him not the respite he was aiming for, but a more determined insistence from the stubborn gryffindor.

"Severus, look at me. Please!, just tell me... What's the matter?"

His dark eyes swept the room once again. A last look towards all those things that he finally understood he'd always desired but had never had the courage to reach out for.

A strange feeling of crazy _recklessness_ shot through him when he caught sight of his godchild, swaying carelessly in the arms of Longbottom, and he truly felt annoyed with himself. There was Draco, dancing the night away with a boy he'd openly despised during most of his childhood. It didn't seem to matter to anyone that they'd been enemies at one point. Or that it had been Draco's crazy aunt the one who'd crucioed Longbottom's parents into cursed catatonia. No one seemed to care about such things anymore. No one was even _looking_ at them in any way...

They were simply... _laughing._ Dancing. They looked enraptured. Trapped inside a world of their own making that one else seemed inclined to destroy.

Why was it that he, himself, lacked the kind of courage that his beloved godson showed so easily?.

Harry's hand rose to rub across his left arm in a gentle, soothing contact and he shivered from head to toe, unable to decide if the touch simply scared him, or unnerved him, or comforted him...

"Severus?"

His heart lodged in his throat when he finally turned around to stare straight into the boy's eyes with a kind of utterly terrified trepidation. He was _crazy._ He knew that he was crazy... He was going to open his big mouth and say something truly stupid that would end up with him being left alone to nurse the worst kind of humiliation that he'd been forced to endure since he was sixteen, but he _couldn't_ seem to find the arguments necessary to convince his ridiculous mind to remain silent.

"I... I want to dance, Harry."

The words left his trembling lips and the whole world seemed to have come to a sudden and complete stop all around him. Everything stilled in that one instant as his lungs froze with stress and his blood pounded furiously within his overwhelmed veins. He _knew_ that he was pale. He felt cold. He was trembling...

This was, without a doubt, one of the hardest moment's of his life.

The auror blinked at him for a painfully long second. Beautiful emerald eyes looked confused before they lit up with unmistakable joy. A smile broke across those golden features as the gryffindor lurched towards him with his very next breath.

"You want to _dance_?" The sentence had a breathless, intent quality to it. It sounded dazed, amazed, joyous. Almost as choked and terrified as Severus' own request had been and he couldn't, in all honestly, tell which one of them was more relieved by the other's reaction when those calloused fingers closed around his own potion-tainted ones and the boy simply said:

"If you want to dance we'll dance, Severus."

TBC...


	32. Chapter 32

_**THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 32.**_

He looked at the picture on the front page of the Prophet with dismayed dark eyes and then plopped, utterly devoid of all strength, down into his chair.

He'd been reckless. Utterly, ridiculously stupid and now he had to endure the horror of being confronted with _this..._

**Besotted Saviour fails to enthrall our Greatest Hero...**

If the caption of the article was bad, then the photograph that accompanied it was worse. It showed them dancing together during his Order of Merlin reception ball and it had been craftily timed to catch them looking rather... _odd._

Although they were both clearly waltzing together, Harry had been caught looking up at him with the kind of joyous adoration that not even a grainy picture could disguise and he... he was holding onto the boy so carefully that he looked very stiff and uncomfortable. There was a slight frown touching his forehead and he seemed... _vexed... _with his dancing companion.

Despite the fact that his eyes were clearly seeing proof that this had actually happened he could not remember this instant in any way. He remembered... joy and gratitude. Peacefulness. Calm...

He'd danced at a ball for the very first time in his life and it had felt so wonderful... he'd twirled around the ballroom with Harry for a while. One song giving way to another as they swayed to the music. Then Minnie had cut in front of them, demanding her turn with him, and that had started a strange and disconcerting evening of dancing with her and Poppy, with Aurora and Pomona. With Cissy and even, in a moment that had had them both grinning at each other like little children, with Draco.

Now the Prophet had picked up a story that twisted the beautiful evening into some sort of lurid three-ring-circus and he felt so disappointed that he wanted to go back to bed and _curl_ under his blankets for all eternity.

There was another picture of Harry, seated at a table in what appeared to be splendid solitude, while he himself could be seen dancing in the background with Aurora. The caption to that one read a disconcertingly inaccurate:

**Potter's hopes crushed as his man dances the night away with a string of Hogwarts teachers...**

"No. Oh, no!..."

He could not believe that _this_ was happening to him!. Couldn't cope with the horrible idea that his selfish desire to dance could have brought this kind of... ridicule... to a very dear friend. He should have _known_ that it wasn't the best idea to expose himself in this way. Not in such a public venue... But, with Harry by his side, he'd believed himself _entitled_ to some fun. He'd _dared_ to imagine that he could allow himself to abandon his protective shield of formal rigidity without having to pay any sort of heavy price for that mistake...

His head started to show the first signs of a terrible migraine and he wondered what, in the name of Salazar, had possessed him to believe that he could behave this idiotically in public without expecting the whole bloody world to butt in and find something hurtful to say about it all. Ebony eyes raked the whole article twice and the very breath halted inside his lungs as his increasingly disbelieving eyes proceeded to inform him that whoever had signed this... this... _atrocious_ pack of _lies_ had painted the picture of a sweet, besotted Harry who'd allowed himself to descend into cringing ridiculousness, in order to ensnare the attention of a man who couldn't even see him...

"Severus?"

He jumped a mile high in his chair and turned around wildly. Hand steady around his wand and eyes all but shooting lethally cold daggers towards the fireplace. He felt crazed with shamed discomfort, sickened with abject misery. His stomach dropped to his feet as he discovered Harry's face examining him carefully from within the green-tinged fire that graced the hearth.

"I'm sorry, Harry. I... I am so sorry... I don't know how I can fix _this,_ but I promise you that I'll _try._ I'll send a letter to the editors. I'll have Luc's lawyers descend over whoever wrote this, like a pack of Dementors... I promise you that they'll print a retraction before the day is over!"

On the other side of the flames Harry sighed. His eyes shone with something that looked so very much like sorrow that Severus' own consciousness writhed with deep guilt. He had been so selfish last night... He had thought only of himself. He had placed his dear friend under the scrutiny of every derisive son of a bitch there was and allowed himself to be used as a tool to humiliate the auror completely.

"So I'm too late. You've already seen it... I want to cross over, Severus. Do I have your permission to do so?"

He was shattered by the seriousness of that tone. By the fact that the boy wanted to hash things out in person. By the very real possibility that public derision could be the one thing that the gryffindor would not be able, or willing, to... ignore.

Would this be the end of their friendship then?. That'd be so unfair... after managing to survive the upheaval of Harry's love confession and his own negative reaction to it, were they really going to lose it all over some inflamed little article?. His eyes closed with undisguised distress and he couldn't swallow the thick lump that was lodged inside his drying throat. Not even to grant the boy permission to cross over.

Thankfully Harry seemed to read him like a book and it was only a few seconds before the floo was properly activated and the most determined version of the boy that he'd ever seen was strolling straight towards him.

"Severus... Severus!. _Look_ at me!" He could hear the clear command to obey, and obey promptly, in the voice of the Head Auror and found himself following directions meekly, like a brainless, tethered puppet.

His dark eyes settled over the flashing green ire that was so clearly imprinted on Harry's own gaze and a shiver of utter dejection raked him from head to toes.

"I'm sorry!. I'm sorry, Harry. So sorry... I... I shouldn't have ever asked for that dance..."

The explosive sigh that rent the air at that second halted his frantic words at once and he flinched, like a terrified and wounded bird, as his eyes caught the sudden raising of the gryffindor's tanned hands.

Harry froze mid-motion and they both stared at each other with a kind of terrible understanding. Silence became an entity so thick that he actually believed that he'd be able to touch it's jagged edges, if he so much as lifted his own hands.

Nothing moved in the office for a long and utterly suffocating eternity. Then the boy fell to his knees beside the desk. Careful movements bringing unusually trembling digits into gentle, warm contact with his own freezing-cold hands.

"It's OK, Severus. You are perfectly safe with me. I'm not going to hurt you... I'd never hurt you!. I'm not your father and you are not your mother. Neither of us is going to become like either of those two. Gosh... I could kill that bitch for this!..."

He was so puzzled by those last seven words that he blinked in confused befuddlement and stared down, straight into his companion's thunderous face, with a total lack of understanding.

"Bitch? What bitch? I don't think I follow you, Harry."

"Skeeter. Who else?. She likes to write under an alias every now and then. This is one of those occasions when she didn't have the balls to publish her poisonous trash under her own name. I bet even she knows how many people she's just pissed off with this nonsense!"

"Nonsense? She called you a shamefully pathetic besotted fool in this article of hers!. She's insulted you and scorned both, your reputation and your feelings, without any sort of pity and it's all because of _me._ _None_ of this would have happened if I hadn't been idiotic enough to ask you to dance..."

Harry's jaw clamped so rigidly that he could see the twitching muscle on the side of it as it began to pound crazily under the strain of the auror's strong emotions.

"Don't you _dare!. _Don't you _dare_ regret having asked for something as simple as a twirl around that ballroom!. Don't you _dare_ regret having had the courage to decide that you could have some fun, just because this greedy, abusive, soulless monster of a journalist has decided to use us _both_ to sell some more newspapers.

You were happy last night, Severus. So happy... I'd have given you that dance and more just to keep that lovely expression on your face for the rest of your life... I'm not letting this dammed article ruin that moment for you, no matter what. This is not your _fault._ This doesn't even matter to _me._ Do you understand me?. This is _trash_, and we both know it!. Actually... almost everyone knows it. You are the only one I know who'll be bothered by it..."

He gaped at the boy. Mind abuzz with a hundred and one thoughts that held not a single shred of his usual ruthless logic. He felt out of his depth. Out of control. He felt utterly exposed and vulnerable. He felt perfectly unable to cope with this... wholly unexpected situation.

"But... this article is totally humiliating to you, Harry. She is laughing at you publicly!. She... she... she calls you a hopelessly devoted _loser._.."

"Then she is wrong isn't she?. I'm _here_ and so are _you._ I was among the very few you danced with last night. I haven't lost you and I'm not going to. Not over _this._..

I'm not humiliated, or ashamed, or whatever bloody word she uses to describe my feelings for you, alright?. I love you with all of my heart, Severus. My emotions are all beautiful and precious and absolutely _wonderful_ to me!. Loving you does not humiliate me. It doesn't bring me shame or turns me into some forlorn little shadow... It makes me _stronger._ It makes me _happy._ It has allowed my heart to thrive and my life to have a reason to continue. Can't you see that I'm nobody, if I'm not this man who adores you?...

I want you to look at me and see the truth. There's no need for you to panic, or to suffer in reaction to this rubbish!. There's no need for you to berate yourself over those moments that brought you so much pleasure... I'd do it all over again, even if I knew that this was going to happen."

His cheeks flushed crimson-red and the stiffened rigidity with which he'd held his body disappeared as those words sank within his mind. He sagged then in relieved acknowledgement that this wouldn't be the end of their relationship. His hands held onto Harry's own tightly. Too tightly. He could not control his need to... hold onto the boy for dear life.

A soft sigh shattered the uneasy silence and the fingers of Harry's free hand came up to card gently through his hair. His eyes closed, forehead butting softly against those callused digits as he allowed himself to enjoy the comfort of _accepting_ this small token of affection without fuss...

"It's OK, Severus. Everything is OK..."

His eyes shot open then and he jerked his head away in order to stare at the gryffindor with a sort of appalled wonder.

"How can you even say that?. They are _laughing_ at you, Harry. They are... they all _know_ exactly how you feel and are using your weakness to..."

A careful hand framed his jawline and a silencing thumb was pressed against his lips in a gentle, but firm, gesture. Intense emerald eyes bored into his own with such focused intensity that he felt as if their look alone held the power to burn him from the inside out, mark him somehow. Claim him.

"Loving you is not a _weakness_, Severus. Loving you is the best thing that I've ever done!"

They both looked at each other in the small silence that ensued and his heart froze with the absolute certainty that he held this man's heart in the palm of his hand. He didn't want to crush it, but he wasn't the best guardian for such treasures...

"I have never held my emotions out, onto the light, Harry. I can't do this thing you do. It scares me...

I don't _want_ to be responsible for _anyone_ judging you harshly. I believe that you deserve... better than _this._ Better than _me._ Better than being utterly humiliated by the likes of Rita Skeeter because of me."

The loud gasp that the boy exhaled sounded like a wounded cry in the aching silence. It made him flinch with the guilt of a murderer and he turned his face away, closed his eyes. Chose to find refuge in temporary, self-inflicted blindness, like true coward that he was...

He could inflict the hurt, but couldn't bear to witness it. He could push the boy away, but dared not confront the pain it caused him... He could be a cold-hearted bastard, for Harry's own good, but lacked the strength to lie outright to the boy's face...

"And I believe you are _wrong_ about this. About love in general_..._

I _know_ what you really think about all matters of the heart, you know?. I know how you used to deal with them. How you hide your affection for others under layers of misdirection and fake indifference. How you keep love like a secret made for darkness...

I think it's time we talk this through, Severus. I think it's time someone actually tells you that you are wrong, dead _wrong_, about it all!."

His mind tried to understand those strange words, but it could not. He knew not what the child was trying to imply here but, whatever it was, he didn't like it in the slightest.

He'd be the first man to agree with the idea that he wasn't the most rational of men when it came to such things, but he'd never developed a bloody _philosophy_ about relationships, either.

He'd loved too. Maybe not greatly, or perfectly, or even _successfully_, but he'd _tried_ and he'd done the best he could...

He _resented_ the very insinuation that he was some sort of reclusive die-hard bachelor. He'd actually spent most of his adult life holding on to _love._ Trying to prove that he'd been worthy of it... trying to _deserve_ it.

He was finally beginning to understand that he _craved_ to be in possession of someone's affection with the same kind of greed that a cactus craves rain-water. He... He might be too cowardly to risk his heart again, but... that did not stop him from holding on to his unreasonable dreams with every last shred of hope that had managed to survive the ruthless hardships of his life.

"I don't understand..."

To his never-ending surprise he found himself on the receiving end of a wholly puzzling question:

"Do you remember Kreacher, Severus?"

His brow furrowed in disconcerted puzzlement and he answered it warily:

"Black's old elf? Yes, I remember him. Why? What has he done now?. He is an odd one, that elf. Always looking at me with that strangely intense look, always following me around... I'm not sure he is completely sane, but then I'm not surprised. Once you consider the family he's served for so long, one must wonder about the kinds of things he's seen and done..."

Harry stood up then and looked straight at him for a long time. Silence grew as they both remained still. The boy making his mind up about whatever it was that he wanted to say and he, himself, lost among a million of small, hazy recollections about that elf and his weird fetish for him. Things he had forgotten about or simply ignored, things that had never really been quite normal...

"Kreacher died about six months after the end of the war. He was old and he was tired. He believed that he had failed in his last task and so... he allowed himself to drift away from life"

He could not imagine what in the bloody Hell the boy could possibly expect him to say in answer to this announcement, so he gritted his jaw and _endured_ the small silence that followed with as much forbearance as he could muster.

"He died the day after the head of St Mungo's Healers finally found the balls to tell Draco that you were _dead _in every way that mattered to them. He wanted your godson's permission to cast the Finis Cor* spell on you.

Kreacher was in the room with all of us. He had shown a _willingness_ to look after you and we... we saw nothing odd in that. We assumed that he needed something to do after the war. By the time I finally understood his strong attachment to you he had already passed away"

His dark eyes looked at the boy in utter, undisguised confusion. He could not begin to piece together this strange tale. Kreacher had never been particularly _loyal_ to anyone. He'd been an absolute pain in the arse most of the time...

Always muttering nonsense under his breath. Always giving lip to Albus about the _Real_ _Masters_ of the house of Black and the strength of their supposed _hearts._ Always hiding in the shadows and spying on them all with those bulging, hate-filled eyes...

Always... _Always_ coming to _his_ _aid_ whenever he'd been weakened or wounded on the field, silently apparating him to safety and taking care of him... A veritable mountain of old memories flashed across his mind-scape and he recoiled with a new and horrifying suspicion as to where exactly this already creepy conversation could be going.

"I... No. No!. I refuse to accept the idea that the elf... Are you _crazy_, Potter? That's not only so unnatural that it doesn't even bear thinking about, it's plain and simply _sick_!. I'd have never... No. _No_. That elf was crazy or something!. I'm not willing to believe that it could have held some kind of twisted _affection_ towards me."

Harry's smile was a slash of pale sorrow. His green eyes shone with something very much like defeated discontent and he allowed himself to fall back, into the closest chair, with a loud plop.

"But he did, Severus. Kreacher believed in the _possibility_ of your recovery with so much hope that when the Healers told us they couldn't save you his whole world crashed down. He lost his will to live. He believed that he had failed to keep you safe... You were his reason for living, don't you see?. The last task that his beloved master ever gave him was to make sure that you survived the war. To see you to safety. To ensure that you found... _happiness_, someday."

His breath caught and he just froze with an utterly inexplicable feeling of imminent danger. He could tell that whatever was coming was going to be bad. Bad enough to put those shadows inside the boy's bright eyes. Bad enough to bring the small hairs at the back of his neck into a standing position.

"Task? What task?... Can't you see that you are making no sense, Harry?. Sirius Black would have _never_ ordered his elf to look after me!"

Harry's saddened little snort touched something truly vulnerable within him. He now knew that he had failed to understand something quite crucial, although what that might be he couldn't even begin to imagine. He was _certain_, though, that he was disappointing the child somehow. Disappointing him very deeply...

"You don't _know_, do you?. I always suspected that you didn't, but... Once I pieced it all together everything was so obvious that I couldn't explain to myself how it's possible that you didn't see it... he left clues _everywhere._ In his diary, in his books, in a thousand and one essays that you helped him correct and he could never bring himself to throw away... I think everyone in the slytherin dorms must have known!. Sirius certainly did. That's why his hatred of you doubled after your third year..."

"Everyone knew what, Harry?. Whatever it is you've got to say just... go ahead and say it, for Salazar's sake!. My head is already spinning, trying to follow this crazy conversation. I think you should just... take a deep breath and spill out your little tale all in one go."

Wretched silence ensued as Harry sighed. His hands came up to rub the whole of his face harshly and he seemed to brace himself as if for impact.

Finally those green eyes settled over him with so much pity that his heart froze in his chest and his breath hitched.

"You are right, of course, Severus. I just... This is going to be so hard for me... I don't ever want to speak about him, or _her,_ ever again, please!. Not after this..."

A heavy lump settled in his stomach. One so huge, so cold, so bitter, that it forced his very guts into tight knots.

"Her? Is this about your mother?"

"Not really. No. But it is about _you._ About the way you felt towards her. About something that you said a million years ago to your friend Lucius Malfoy. Let me just...

OK, I already told you that Kreacher died soon after the staff at St Mungo's decided to wash their hands off you. What he never found out was that Draco refused point-blank to allow them to stop your heart from beating. He took you off the hospital, directly into his father's bloody mansion, and refused to let anybody near you.

By then I was already dealing with the idea that you... you had never been the scoundrel I thought I knew. I was trying to come to terms with my new perception of you. I was already wrestling with the suspicion that the man I was beginning to glimpse, through every little piece of evidence that was coming out in support of your position as a spy for the Order, was someone who could blow my mind away. A man I'd love to meet. A man worthy of... _everything.._.

Long story short, by the time I came around to clean the little cubicle where Kreacher used to live it was months after he died. I found something that he'd kept for a long time, his most precious treasure. It was a small purple colored bottle made of thick glass. He had labeled it in his own, almost illegible, hand-writing with the very mysterious label of "The master's heart".

It picked my curiosity so badly... I was bored and I was alone and I just... wanted to snoop, I suppose.

There was memory inside that bottle, Severus. A memory that once belonged to Regulus Black. A memory about you.

He must have been a second or third year by the look of him. And you... you were wearing a prefect's badge... so, I'd say it must have been either your fifth or sixth year at Hogwarts.

You and Malfoy were talking in the boy's dormitories. There was no one else around and he was trying to heal some cuts on your face from a fight that you had with my father..."

"I don't recall any of this..."

"Let me finish!. Malfoy was furious with you. He was telling you that all your troubles with the Gryffindors could be over, if you'd only step back from your friendship with my mum. He was screaming at you, actually. Asking you _why_ couldn't you _see_ that one day she'd be my father's, anyway. He told you that it was clear as water that my father's hatred for you would force him to demand that she choose between the two of you"

Black eyes lit with a sudden recognition.

"I remember this. But... Regulus wasn't there, Harry."

The auror shot him a look about as fierce as a tiger's.

"Yes, he was!. He was hiding under the bed, because you guys almost caught him stealing from Knot's chocolate-frog stash. Do you remember what you told Malfoy then?. You admitted that you _knew_ she'd eventually abandon you. That there was _never_ any chance of you ever _winning_ in a battle of charm against James Potter.

You told him that you would ride that train to it's bitter end, regardless, because you had no other option. You _said_ that when you are ugly and ill-tempered and a right bastard to boot you have to _love_ the way the odd muggle poet put it. That's when you said it, Severus... You quoted the words of an American muggle at Malfoy. Do you remember who it was? Do you remember what you said?"

He was truly discomfited now. He remembered this conversation only vaguely. Was aware that he'd been a right pain in the arse back in those days. Trapped, as he'd been, within the throes of an emotion far too strong to be contained within the flimsy walls of his scrawny little chest, and way too deep to be abandoned or forgotten.

He'd loved her like the desperate loves hope. Because, from all the objects of affection he'd ever chosen, she'd been the kindest to him. The loyalest. The one to never, _ever_, refer to his horrendous physical inadequacies in any shape or form...

"I'd like to abandon this particular conversation here, Harry. Whatever it is you've got to say, I'm certain that you can find a way to express yourself without raking up the past. Pursuing _this_ will hurt us _both..._" He tried to kill the conversation right there, lest he die of sheer embarrassment if the auror forged ahead. But the boy, stubborn as he was, ignored him completely and carried on:

"You recited a verse from an untitled poem written by a man named cummings. Took me months to trace back the few sentences that you spoke to an actual poem, but I managed to do it:

_Love is the voice under all silences, the hope which has no opposite in fear; the strength so strong mere force is feebleness... _Do you remember that, Severus?"

He swallowed with horrified recognition of the one poem his mother used to whisper under her breath again and again. Whenever his father hit her, whenever he'd leave the house and failed to return for days on end, whenever that muggle bastard had dared to call them both freaks for having the gift of magic, she'd hide behind the refuge of those despised words...

"I can't believe I ever used them myself..." He whispered into the expectant silence and felt like crumbling into tiny pieces of himself at the mere idea of _accepting_ that he'd turned into his own mother for Lily...

"You told Malfoy that you could never let her know how you felt because you _knew_ that she didn't see you in that kind of light. You said that you couldn't force yourself to abandon your own feelings, either, because you didn't need her to know about them for you to have them. To be loyal to them. To find joy in the knowledge that you loved a beautiful girl, even if she could never love you back..."

He was red enough to resemble the ripest of tomatoes. His hands trembled and his eyes, so black that they had turned into pools of spotless ink, were widened with humiliated anger.

"I was _fifteen_, Potter, for Merlin's sake!. I was a stupid romantic idiot, emoting over a girl who couldn't even see him... Surely I do not deserve being embarrassed to death by the idiocy I used to spout when I was still a _child._"

The boy shook his head very slowly. Shattered green eyes stared straight at him with something terribly close to the most desperate, wretched kind of hurt:

"You don't understand _anything._.. You weren't the only stupid romantic idiot in that room, Severus. Regulus... Regulus Black was right _there_. And so was I, as soon as I discovered that bloody bottle!. _We_ were looking at you, from underneath the bed, as you pronounced those words and you did it with a face that was bloodied by a broken lip and about a dozen tiny cuts. You said them with an expression in your eyes that was as hard as stone. With that voice of yours already hinting at the strength that it would gain in only a few years...

_You_ were, at that very second, the most magnificently romantic thing that _we_ had ever seen, and we _both_ fell hard for you right there and then. Only... _he_ loved you in exactly the same way you loved _her._ Because, just like you, he'd also known from the very beginning that he could never have you and he was slytherin enough never to risk rocking that boat. He never managed to bring himself to confess his feelings for you, don't you see?.

He _lived_ and _died_ for you and you never even knew it!. It's one of the most terrible tragedies that I've ever witnessed. Regulus Black joined Voldermort because _you_ did and then he attempted to stop that bastard, after he crucioed you for the very first time...

That image of you, reciting the wretched lines of that stupid poem with your face covered in blood, was his most precious memory. So precious, in fact, that he'd left it behind and his loyal elf kept it safe long after his death...

They _both_ kept it in silence. Always... Always in _silence._ _Hidden_ from your eyes, because that poor boy truly believed you when you told Lucius Malfoy that as long as you kept your love for Lily Evans hidden, like the voice under all silences, you could also keep the hope that knew no fear...

You said that as long as she never had cause to say _no_ today, there'd always be the _chance_ that she could say _yes_ tomorrow. You could _dare_ to dream and imagine that one day she might feel what you felt. One day she might turn towards you and bring you to life... The worst part of it is that your interpretation of that bloody poem is so painfully flawed that I cried like a young child when I finally found it, Severus"

His eyes burned with the horror of finding himself thus exposed. Of learning about the unforeseen repercussions of some ridiculously emotional outburst that he had when he was younger. He'd been so blind. So stupid... Thinking back now he could remember a million and one looks that Regulus Black had constantly bestowed upon him. He remembered the last one in particular. That heartbroken expression of deep sorrow that he'd received as he'd stumbled away from the frenzied orgy that had started when the boy allowed them all inside his brother's love nest in Hogsmeade...

"I never realized any of this..."

"You could have been _happy_, Severus. You could have spent _years_ being cherished by a boy who cared for you enough to die trying to defend you. You could have learned that you were worth the effort, while there was still a chance for you to avoid going down the path that eventually led you to the Dark Lord.

You could have learned to smile and to trust in other people while there was still some innocence left in you. You could have been... just a boy, finding love for the first time, daring to sneak out at night for a naughty assignation in the astronomy tower. Finding out how it feels to see yourself through the eyes of another who actually adores you... You could have had it all, if only you had _never_ said those words about love being the voice under all silences..."

The moment hung, like a teardrop from an eyelash. It shook and killed him with a sorrow that was threatening to destroy his very sanity. He felt sickened and guilty. He felt savaged by pity. He could not begin to... _absorb._.. the abject horror that this unexpected revelation was causing him.

"I... I never _knew._.." He couldn't move past that thought. Couldn't react to anything other than the fact that he... he had influenced Regulus' life to such a level and he'd never, ever, guessed it.

"I... what is it that you want me to _do_ with _this knowledge_?. Why did you have to _tell_ _me_ such thing?. Don't you see that none of this changes anything, Harry?"

"Severus... You've got to look at me. Look at me!. Of course this changes something!. It changes _everything_. I refuse to let you live like that again. I refuse to let you hide behind that sentence.

This thing with the article... it's more of the same, don't you see?. You _want_ me to behave like Regulus did, like yourself... You _want_ me to give up fighting for you and... _cower._.. like a mouse, in my little dark corner, just because bloody Rita Skeeter decided to earn a bunch of extra-galleons writing a pack of lies for the Sunday edition.

Well... I do love you and I refuse to keep quiet about it. I won't do it!. Not even to keep the flimsy hope that you might, one day, come to feel the same emotions. The prophet can print all it wants. The whole world can call me a loser. They can laugh until they are all hoarse from it, for all I care!. But you... you are going to _learn_ that life doesn't belong to those who won't dare to confront it. _Silence_ belongs to the dead and to the cowards, Severus. It belongs to the traitors and the liars. It belongs somewhere _you_ don't belong!.

You are neither dead nor a coward. You are the bravest man I know!. You've got to learn to speak out loud. To have some faith in both, yourself and others.

You can have _love._ You can have _friendship._ You can have honor and respect, devotion, truth, even adoration... You can have anything and everything you dare to reach out for. I'm here to make sure that you have a shot at getting all of that and more, Severus. I _swear_ that I'll give you anything that you desire, _anything!._ The one thing you can not have is silence, though. Not from me, at least. _Silence_ is the one thing that you don't actually _deserve..."_

He blinked at the boy with a shocked kind of befuddlement. He didn't know if they were talking about Lily or Regulus or he, himself, any longer. He didn't know if they were talking about friendship or love or life in general. He didn't know how he felt about any of this. Or what the boy actually expected him to... _do._

"What does that mean Harry? I... I'm afraid that I still don't understand what it is, exactly, that you are trying to tell me"

The gryffindor stalked closer then. A tanned hand fell over the newspaper and ripped the front page off with a sharp, ferocious motion. The parchment crumpled under the destructive strength of Harry's slowly closing fist with a loud rustle and he couldn't take his eyes away from the veritable storm of unyielding resolution that was flashing emerald fire from within that determined young gaze.

"This means that we are going out to lunch. Today. To Diagon Alley, Severus. It means that our friendship is finally coming out of Hogwarts, and to Hell with anyone who dares to question it!. It means that your time for hiding in here and attempt to keep us stashed away among the shadows of this office, like some kind of dark and shameful little secret, has come to an end.

We are going back to the bookstores and the theater, wizarding ones this time. We are going to find somewhere nice and quiet where I can take you dancing. Because you actually _love_ to dance, don't you?... This means that we are going to stop being friends only in private. We are going to do this out into the open. We are friends. We've got nothing to hide. You have every right in the world to get a life that has nothing at all to do with this school, and whoever doesn't like it can very well go jump off a bridge for all I care!..."

TBC...

A/N * Finis Cor roughly translates as to stop the heart.


	33. Chapter 33

_**THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 33.**_

Severus gazed at the foyer of the movie theatre in dazed wonderment. He'd come to a sudden halt barely five steps into the building and now stood gawking stupidly around himself with what he suspected must look very much like gauche imbecility.

Far from being understandably cross with his unseemly behaviour, Harry smiled delightedly at him. The boy seemed to be perfectly happy doing absolutely nothing other than standing next to him while he gazed around moronically. The gryffindor was going as far as to chuckle under his breath in perfectly irritating self-satisfaction.

"Look at you!. I _knew_ you'll love _this._ But even I didn't expect to leave you speechless, Severus"

He was too impressed with the place to bother with the kind of cutting retort that such impertinent little comment truly deserved, so he ignored the boy regally. His eyes roamed over the high ceiling and the gleaming floor, taking in the life sized cardboard cut-outs of various images that went from the perfectly ordinary to the astonishingly bizarre... There were coloured tube-lights everywhere and TV screens hung from the roof, showing intriguing spinets of various films. The whole place looked so out of the ordinary, so removed from all the other muggle establishments that he'd ever visited, that he could not shake the sense of unreality that clung to his perfectly astounded mind.

Harry's hand grabbed his elbow suddenly, steering him away from the path of a very harassed father and his two arguing children, as they almost bowled them over in their apparent eagerness to reach a long counter that was filled to the brim with brightly wrapped bags of what he assumed to be muggle candy. He was busily studying the bizarrely shaped drink dispenser when his companion's impatient nudge to the small of his back forced him to turn his head and frown at the boy impatiently.

"What is it?"

Laughing green eyes rolled good-naturedly as the auror regally ignored the slight sharpness of his tone.

"I can't believe you haven't noticed it yet, Severus!. I've been imagining the look on your face all week long, and now you are making me wait because you are inexplicably intrigued by the bloody buttons of the soda fountain..."

His frown deepened as he attempted to decipher that perfectly puzzling complaint. He could not understand what it meant but he suddenly realized that the boy had steered him _purposely_ towards the large counter, instead of proceeding to walk in the opposite direction, where a man stood guarding what appeared to be the entrance to the show-rooms.

Now that he thought about it there was a veritable crowd of people hovering around this area. Harry seemed to be about to explode with the kind of impatient exuberance of a child about to unveil a great surprise. His eyes were bright and exited, his lips curved into a great, pleased smile and his hand tapped constantly on the side of his thigh, in a very telling nervous gesture that Severus hadn't noticed before.

With his curiosity thoroughly piqued now, he allowed his dark eyes to sweep the whole surrounding area once again, taking in the orderly line of people waiting at the candy counter and marvelling anew at the childishness of the muggles. How could these many _adults_ be still hooked on the questionable delights of _candy_?. It was then that the customer at the very front of the cue moved away from the line carrying with her a gigantic tub filled to the brim with...

"Is that _popcorn_?" He could not hide the perplexed longing from his voice as his eyes, round with gob-smacked disbelief, followed that muggle as if entranced.

Potter laughed beside him.

"Finally!" The boy whispered delightedly and Severus simply ignored him in order to take a couple of dazed steps towards that orderly line of people. The heavenly smell of the popped corn filled his nostrils as he approached and he inhaled it with relish, giving himself over to his almost instinctive need to sniff the air, like a dog smells a tree, and realizing that he was perfectly unable to understand how it was _possible_ that he hadn't noticed it before...

He forgot the noise around him and the intriguingly mysterious inner workings of the muggle soda fountain that had enthralled him so a mere second ago. He forgot that he stood in a muggle theatre, carefully attired with the flimsy and strange clothing that all muggles preferred. He forgot that the film that Harry had dragged him out to watch was scheduled to start at any second. He forgot Harry altogether...

Ebony coloured eyes settled on the gigantic box, filled to the brim with white puffs of popped corn, from were the busy attendants were scooping out the astonishingly large amounts that every tub could carry. His gaze followed each costumer along the line with the kind of wishful longing of a small child who stood, quietly and utterly enthralled, just outside a toy-store's brightly lit window. He was so totally consumed with his almost dazed contemplation of that wonderful machine that he wasn't even aware of his own almost forlorn sigh of longing, until Harry's hand grabbed his own again.

"Severus?" The sheer amusement that was colouring the gryffindor's voice was unmistakable and he found, to his astonishment, that it didn't really bother him all that much. At least not right at that second.

Forcing himself to pull his gaze away from the coveted popped treat that was being so very liberally dispensed less than eight feet away from where they were standing he _attempted_ to ignore the blissful smell that surrounded them. _Attempted_ to forget the fact that he hadn't had popcorn since before he'd abandoned the boy's flat for the last time... Attempted to convince his suddenly dejected mind of the fact that he hadn't _missed_ all those evenings spent curled on the sofa with that ridiculous yellow plastic bowl in his lap and Potter's giggling form snuggled against his side...

Harry smiled sweetly at him, face alight with the kind of affection that he seemed to be absolutely unable or, more likely, simply _unwilling_ to ever hide. There was such a look of patient understanding clearly written in those features that it finally dawned on him just how much this man actually knew about him. About his likes and dislikes. About his nightmares and dreams. About his fears.

His chest froze with the sudden awareness that this man... _this_ _man_ had brought him here on purpose. He'd been _waiting_ to see his reaction to the popcorn... The auror may have even wanted to... _indulge_ him... with this outing, give him something to... _replace..._ the treasured memory of those evenings that they used to share together.

"You are going to tell me that I can have the popcorn. Are you not, Harry?. You've probably been planning on getting it for me all along..."

Gentle fingers pushed a long lock of his dark hair behind his ear and he felt himself in danger. He feared that he could easily drown within the depths of the profound devotion that was flashing like a beacon across those gorgeous emerald eyes.

"It always surprises me how your very first assumption about anything is to imagine that it isn't meant for you, Severus. Of course I meant to buy it. Of course I wanted this to be a wonderful surprise... Of course you can have as much popcorn as that flat stomach of yours can possibly take!. _Why_ else would I have dragged you out here for?. I do _know_ that you are not particularly that keen on the movies themselves."

He was frightened by the power of the emotion that swept him from head to toes then. It was gratefulness, yes. But it was also... _joy_. It was hope and it was _trust_ and it was _happiness_, too.

He had never had someone do this for him. He'd lived his life in a bubble of loneliness and duty. Of orderly restraint. Of austere self-denial.

He'd very rarely _indulged_ in anything other than books. Never allowed himself to splurge on a vacation. Or a dinner out of Hogwarts. Never allowed himself to relax enough to enjoy anyone's half-hearted attempts at _befriending_ him.

He'd existed in a kind of hopeless vacuum until his almost-death and had awoken expecting very much the same fate of honour-bound responsibility towards his peers, towards his students and the wizarding world in general to _trap_ him once again into the kind of existence that had never made him happy or even merely _content_...

His eyes burned with irrational emotion and he swallowed the huge lump that had lodged in his throat and was threatening to suffocate him with visibly effort. He was well past overwhelmed by his very strong reaction to the whole situation and he feared that he was about to embarrass the both of them, unless he managed to bring himself under control.

For the very first time he understood that they were probably more than friends already. Because he was sure as hell that he'd never shared _this_ with either Luc or Cissy. Albus had been all about fatherly advice and ruthless demands to give more of himself, and of his time, to the cause that had consumed them both and Minnie... Minnie was, in many ways, as stiff as he himself felt most of the time.

Draco loved him beyond all doubts, but he did so with the affection of a son. They counted on each other. They defended one another. They did share a great number of things, but they did so from a structure of father and child, of godparent and godson. Of mentor and pupil...

Harry had been trying all along to relate to him as his equal in all things. As one man facing another. As a... _companion._

"I... I need to thank you, Harry..." He finally whispered in a tone that wobbled with sheer tension.

The emerald eyes that had been focused intently on his paling face frowned with obvious concern.

"It's only popcorn, Severus..."

His cowardly mind latched onto that opening that the child had, so unwittingly, given him. He could retreat in this instant. Retract his intended meaning and behave as if he'd never dared to voice aloud his thoughts. He could _allow_ Harry to move forwards, join the muggle queue in search of his treat and then _suffer_ through the ordeal of this film, knowing that he'd let another chance to be _sincere_ about who he was and what he felt pass him by...

He didn't feel like keeping quiet, though. Keeping safe had never felt quite so unappealing to his wanted to put an end to his own self-destructive behaviour. That ingrained need he felt of breaking his own heart slowly, through a million little daily doses of constant self-denial, all of it rooted on the fact that he... he feared the _possibility_ of hurtful rejection _more_ than he'd ever feared the Dark Lord himself.

He wanted to be as brave as Albus had once told him that he was. He wanted to be... _worthy._.. of Harry's care. Of Harry's time. Of Harry's stubborn courage. He wanted to reach out once more and see if this man could catch him this time, too. Bring him back to safety before he managed to shatter his own brittle, fragile self against the ground...

His pale fingers clamped around the boy's golden wrist so fiercely that he knew that he'd leave marks. He felt faint with a breathless kind of awful trepidation as he forced his own gaze to unveil the thick swirl of overwhelming longing that was wreaking the very worst kind of chaos within his psyche.

Whatever his eyes revealed made the gryffindor gasp aloud with something so very close to actual protectiveness that Severus understood, without another single word needing to be pronounced, that he'd chosen his champion with far better taste this time. Where Lily had failed him in the past, leaving him empty and utterly desolate, her son was going to pull through, filling his every broken space with golden sunlight...

"I'm not talking about the popcorn, Harry. I'm talking about _myself._ I... I need to thank you for forcing me back _here._ To this life that I never expected to lead. I want you to understand that I... I've come to value you more than you shall ever know. You've given me more patience than I possibly deserve and I... I feel as if I shouldn't let another second pass without letting you realize that I am grateful for the fact that you've never given up on me, despite my bullheaded efforts to convince you to do exactly that. I'm pretty sure that I'm not worthy of your unwavering affection, but I... I'm selfish enough to want it, anyway."

A thin film of flimsy tears seemed to coat the ethereal beauty of those green eyes in the next second and, although Harry smiled at him sunnily enough, he looked choked and overwhelmed. Nervous. Hopeful. Happy and grateful, both, and also quietly contented.

"You are welcome, Severus" The boy whispered, gruffly. A wide, tanned hand rose in a wobbly arch to give a heartfelt press to his left shoulder before the gryffindor turned around abruptly and walked briskly towards the queue.

Severus watched him go with a sense of anxious agitation. Of powerful confusion. Of hope-filled wonder. He felt poised at the very brink of a cliff that could either make him or break him, if he so much as placed a foot in the wrong place.

He was fearful of what tomorrow might bring in a way that he'd never felt before. He was wary, but he felt also exultant. He felt truly alive for the very first time since the soul-destroying days of his own youth. He was beginning to _believe_ in the possibility that the rest of his life could be filled with joy and brightness. With... with _this._ Whatever this might end up being...

He was loath to turn back and hide once more within the empty shell that he'd inhabited for so long. He didn't know if he was truly strong enough to take the fall for this, if the need for doing so ever arose. But he felt at least brave enough to try reaching for it. To take this chance.

Harry returned to him with a huge tub of popcorn in one hand and a plastic cup of soda in the other. His heart hammered in his chest as he accepted his treat with a new kind of nervousness tangling his tensing stomach into a million knots of half-formed expectations. As if sensing his anxiety the auror's hand hovered near his chin for half a minute, guiding his own black gaze into a straight collision with the darkened green one.

"We will do this at your own pace, Severus. To the extension and the depth that you decide on... I want everything from you that you can give me. I don't care if it's just friendship, or platonic companionship, or even some kind of mixture of those two. You only have to bring yourself to the point of... _demanding._.. whatever it is that you feel you need and I will move Heaven and Earth to try and give that to you without pushing for more.

If you think that you must thank me for not giving up on you, then... I must also thank _you in return. _

Thank you, for being brave enough to _risk_ your trust on me. There's nothing in the world that I could value higher. There's nothing else that could bring me this much joy. You are... _everything_ to me, and I am so terrified that I might spook you again with my stupid behaviour, that I can barely think straight half of the time. Promise me you'll kick me on the shin if I annoy you too much. Please?... _D_on't let me ruin this thing that we have found. Don't let me frighten you, ever again, to the point were you really feel that the only way to guarantee your safety is to apparate yourself far away from me..."

His brain shorted on the receiving end of that heartfelt plea and he found himself floundering for an appropriate answer. He didn't actually know how to react. How to behave. How to... _demand_ or even acknowledge that he needed a reprieve from this truly disorienting see-saw of emotions. He was dizzy with sheer nerves and needed some breathing space for a little while. He needed to think. He needed to _retreat._ Regroup. Calm down...

"I... I think we should find our seats, Harry. All this popcorn won't eat itself and you are just... keeping me from it with all this talk" He managed to choke out eventually, feeling panicked that he'd failed to explain himself correctly. Trembling with the horrifying suspicion that he'd said the wrong thing, come across as a disdainful bastard and alienated his companion beyond forgiveness.

His palms broke into anxious sweat for the brief second it took the gryffindor to look into his own dark gaze questioningly and smile gently at him.

Green eyes rolled as a trembling hand forced the drink up to the auror's lips for a rather abrupt gulp of whatever liquid it contained.

"OK. I get it. I'll shut up now. Let it never be said that I stood between the Greatest Hero, himself, and his giant tub of popcorn... I think your fans might crucio me, in retaliation, if I make you wait for your treat any longer."

That troubling statement made him falter in his progress across the huge hall and he turned horrified black eyes to his companion.

"That is not even remotely funny, Potter!" He growled, squirming with uncomfortable self-awareness.

Harry ignored him completely and curled a daring hand around his elbow, tugging him forwards.

"Relax, will you?. If anyone had told me, while I was at Hogwarts, that having your own group of crazy fans could make you shake like a newborn calf, I'd have laughed them out the door without a second thought.

There's no reason to be wary. Most of them are perfectly harmless, you know?. They'll collect pictures of you from the prophet and send you a couple of letters a year... Nothing more sinister than that."

The discomfiting topic was dropped as they reached the attendant and gave the man their tickets. Entrance to the corridor that opened immediately behind the podium-like collection spot was granted to them and they both walked along the dimly-lit route being pointed out to them by a glowing array of arrows.

The silence was a bit strained, but companionable and Severus had a second to be thankful that the nature of the place demanded silence for the next hour and a half at least. Harry reached the door they were searching for first, and opened it quietly. He stood back, waiting for Severus to cross first, and then resumed his previous position beside him.

The room was much bigger than he'd expected and the size of the screen was just... incredible. He stared straight at it with something so akin to floored disbelief that the boy chuckled once again under his breath.

"You've done this on purpose!" Severus hissed as the child guided him through the barely lit room towards a couple of seats at the left hand corner of the farthest row.

Finally deciding to sit down Harry gazed up at him curiously.

"I've done plenty of things on purpose today, Severus. You must be more specific than that if you want me to acknowledge whatever point you are trying to make."

"I've been gaping around, like an absolute fool, all afternoon long..." He growled in disgruntled vexation as he took his own seat. The place was mostly empty, allowing them the freedom of whispering into each other's ears without worry that they might be overheard.

"Why do you always worry so much about looking less than knowledgeable? Is not as if there's anyone alive who can honestly claim to know it all, you know?. There's nothing wrong with you still having innocence enough to marvel at something new, Severus. I enjoy seeing you like this. I enjoy watching the way your eyes lit with possibilities and wondering what it is that you really think about the things that I show you. I want to be the one to give you all of these new experiences, so that I can claim ownership to them.

You might share a whole world of dark years with Malfoy, a veritable mountain of tales about student's stupidity with most of your colleagues, a million and one tales of unintelligible potions expertise with Draco, but this... _This_ is _mine!. This_ is what we do together. It's what belongs to us and us alone. What _none_ of the others can ever share with you, because they are not a part of it."

He sat frozen in his seat. Tub of corn perched daintily on his lap and dark eyes widened with a kind of startled awareness.

"That's rather... _possessive,_ Potter." He managed to voice the one thought that was filling his whole head with all kinds of confusing reactions.

Wide athletic shoulders simply shrugged, in almost dizzying unconcern.

"That's the way I feel about it. I'm not going to apologize for that, Severus. And drop the Potter, will you? It's kind of disconcerting to hear you using it again, after you've finally decided to drop it"

The short silence that ensued was quite... _perplexing._ There was no tension between them, but there was something very much like it filling the empty space around them slowly, like an invisible cloud laced with some kind of sensory-enhancing potion.

He was gripped by the most strange urge to get back on to his feet and ran away. He desired to _succumb_ to his own panic with such strength that he had to _physically_ anchor himself into place by holding onto the padded armrests of his seat until his knuckles turned white.

Beside him Potter sighed with a weariness that rattled him even further and he prayed for the bloody film to start playing already, so that the moment would ease without any further... _awkwardness._

The gryffindor though, being as thickheaded as any man could be and twice as reckless too, proceeded to plonk his hand over Severus' own and, literally, _peeled_ his clawed digits off the armrest before daring to... _intertwine_ both their hands together.

He was so startled by that action that he tried to jerk his wrist away. Finding the foreign hand quite impossible to dislodge, as it clutched him more firmly in response. Unfathomable ebony coloured eyes focused on the determined features of this man who held him tightly.

"Potter... What on Earth do you think you are doing?" He hissed darkly, once he'd finally realized that the auror had no intention of letting his hand go.

Huge green eyes searched his narrow face with a seriousness that unnerved him.

"You are becoming agitated. You were gripping the poor seat as if it's personally responsible for all the evils of this world. I believe that you are over-thinking things too much, as usual, and spooking yourself into an actual anxiety attack. Am I even close, Severus?"

He was shocked by the accuracy of that insight. He was reeling with the disturbingly opposing needs to... deny all of it with as much fervour as he could possibly muster, before getting to his feet and returning to the safety of Hogwarts, posthaste, under the guise of a fit of pique. Or the even more baffling longing to just... _allow_ his neck to bend, dropping his aching forehead onto Harry's wide shoulder, and _lean_ onto the man's quiet strength until his own returned...

His pale lips trembled with the indecision of not knowing which of those responses to choose and the moment stretched into an eternity of silent staring that trapped him, trapped them, into a bubble that enclosed them together. Separating them completely from the world outside of it.

The lights dimmed even further and a thunderous burst of music blared around the room. Severus jumped in his seat, utterly spooked, and the brat clasped his fingers in a clearly reassuring gesture.

Images flashed across the huge screen and the link between their gazes broke as they both turned. Harry settled against the backrest of his seat, dragging their clasped hands with him and placing them carefully over the too-warm spot at the top of his thigh.

Severus was stiff with plain discomfort. He could not relax enough to just... let go!. The very contact between his own pale skin and the other man's clothed leg was so utterly alien to him, so very disturbing, that he felt as if he'd faint from sheer anxiety.

After a few excruciating minutes of enduring such torture in silence he inclined his head minutely to the side and fairly begged in the boy's ear:

"Harry... you've got to let my hand go!. Please..."

Those tanned fingers twitched very slightly before releasing him gently and he couldn't believe just how... easy _that_ had been. He jerked his hand away hastily and was so shocked by the masculine chuckle that followed his panicked action that he lifted his dark head to frown peevishly at his companion.

"Don't look at me like that, Severus. It did the trick, didn't it?. You became so mad with me that you forgot to be scared altogether... Now why don't you stop huffing and enjoy your popcorn before I decide that you don't really want it all that much and start eating it myself?"

He was so relieved by the very welcome respite that the boy had so unexpectedly offered him that he didn't even question his own impulse and simply followed it through into startling action.

He mock growled in Harry's ear and pulled the tub of fluffy corn away with a sharp motion almost at the very same time that he warned in his best Death-eater tone:

"Don't you dare, Potter... or I'll have to teach you the kind of lesson that no man ever forgets!"

He hadn't realized how very suggestive the words would sound until he heard the auror's startled gasp and his eyes widened with utter mortification even as his whole face flushed with a violent red colour.

"Oh, Merlin!... I'm so sorry... I shouldn't have said _that._.. I..."

Harry came to his rescue by the very practical way of stuffing a handful of corn into his babbling mouth and he stilled, utterly astonished, for half a second. Their eyes clashed once again and they both giggled a bit hysterically until a peeved "sshhss!" interrupted their hilarity.

He ended up biting his lips rather forcefully to still the crazy mirth that had taken over his senses. Harry gazed at him brightly for a very long time, instead of focusing on the film, and all the blood in his veins began to pound with enough strength to make him breathless. His dark eyes shone with exhilarated joy. His thin lips smiled almost constantly as the seconds slowly turned into minutes and he concentrated on nothing else but the sheer pleasure of feeling that tender gaze fixed very firmly on him while he eat all of his popcorn in the darkened quiet of the muggle movie theatre...

TBC...


	34. Chapter 34

**THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 34.**

"No way!" He said with the kind of unmovable finality that would have made many men waver. Harry, though, limited himself to smile patiently at him and ask obnoxiously:

"Why not?"

He glared at the little menace, long fingers tapping on the edge of his desk with telling impatience.

"I'm busy"

The irritating nuisance dared to lift an eyebrow at him with the same kind of absolutely infuriating flair that was typical of Luc.

"You are _always_ busy, Severus. That excuse hasn't worked with me for a few weeks now... You've got to try harder if you really expect me to let you get out of doing this."

He eyed the cheerful expression on the face of his so called friend with a thunderous scowl.

"I am extra-busy today. I have to finish reading the material Luc sent over, before my meeting with Mctavish, or we won't be able to go ahead and decide on a workable plan to have the Hogwarts' Web up and running before the year's end"

Something very much like incensed indignation flitted through the brightness of those green eyes.

"You are meeting with Mctavish again?. What for?. I thought he told you he had no idea about how to set up an Internet network. Isn't that the reason why you asked me to bring in Hermione as a consultant?"

He frowned, puzzled by the dark undertones that had so suddenly turned Harry's voice into an unmistakable growl of sheer vexation.

"Mrs. Granger-Weasley's help has been invaluable to me, Harry. I wouldn't even have known where to start if it hadn't been for her. Add that to the fact that Luc happened to be visiting when she showed up, and decided to take on the daunting task of researching what kind of magical applications could be modified to mimic the muggle technology necessary to both, create and support the network, and I got myself the very best team in magical innovation that this country can provide..."

Instead of appeasing the boy, his words seemed to have irritated him even further.

"Then why, in the name of Godric, is Mctavish involved with the project?. I'm fed up of crossing him in the hallway whenever I drop by. You are spending so much time with him that I can't even listen to you for half an hour without his name popping into the conversation. It's driving me insane!"

He blinked with astonished bewilderment.

"He is my muggle studies professor. He is the one who'll have to run the introductory course on what the Internet is and what can be achieved through it's uses. Planning such a revolutionary syllabus is a very hard and time-consuming task, Harry, particularly for a teacher of so limited experience. Once you take into account the fact that there are no templates already designed for him to use as a guideline, you'll also come to the realization that he is the weakest link in this whole operation.

Hogwarts will be the pioneering institution in introducing the Internet, and all its associated applications, into the world of wizarding academia as far as I'm aware. This is an enormous undertaking and I'm not letting it fail at the last second just because you happen to have developed some sort of inexplicable dislike towards one of my professors!"

The auror's green eyes flashed with something very close to pride. A new softness had now entered the bright emerald orbs, blasting away their former irritation and replacing it with a very obvious look of tender affection.

"I told you I couldn't wait to see what you'd do to our world the moment you got back, didn't I?. You've been at the helm of Hogwarts for less than six months and you are already dragging the heavily traditional carcass of the wizarding school system into the twenty first century, whether it likes it or not, Severus."

He flushed scarlet on the receiving end of that thoroughly undeserved praise.

"Minnie has done a wonderful job in the last four years. She had the far harder task of supervising what must have been a very trying reconstruction. I've come when everything is already done and I'm doing nothing extraordinary at all. There's no glory to be found in copying what the muggles have been doing for decades already"

That wild hair waved atop a head that shook with rueful wonder.

"You are so blind when it comes to your yourself, Severus... You don't see your own achievements in the same way the rest of us see them. It's heartbreaking to realize how very little you value yourself.

Professor Mcgonagal has done great and all, don't get me wrong. But she built on what was there and remained fairly statical for four whole years. It didn't take much effort to walk along the same path that others had already walked before her. There were no obstacles to encounter. No risks to take... She already knew that nothing would go wrong if she stuck to Albus' policies and syllabus.

You, on the other hand, are branching out. You have the courage to risk attempting to carve your own path through a veritable forest of unknowns. Even if you are copying the muggles... you are still having to _make_ the same idea work through magical means. You are researching and learning a whole science as you go. You are _designing_ a specific lesson plan for it. You've brought new blood to a system that has been firmly entrenched in the dark ages for centuries and it's already starting to show..."

He wasn't used to being so openly praised and was utterly unprepared to deal with the situation. He felt embarrassed. Flustered. Woefully lacking the kind of social smoothness that helped Luc navigate moments such as this with astonishing graciousness. He blushed beet-red and lowered his dark gaze towards his desk, utterly at a loss for something to say. He was literally trembling with self-consciousness.

"I can hardly claim to have done any of it alone, Harry. You yourself have pointed out how Mrs Granger-Weasley has aided me in my endeavors. Having managed to pick Luc's voracious curiosity, all I really had to do was sit back in my comfy chair and let the real geniuses here do the work on my behalf..." He finally managed to retaliate with a firm conviction that had the boy directing a pointed look towards him.

From the corner of his eye he could see how that thoughtful green gaze settled over his own lowered head with disturbingly focused attention.

"Hermione has known about the Web since before she joined the school, Severus. The same could be said for most muggle-born students that have come through Hogwarts in the last decade or so. Mactavish is familiar with computers, even if he is not exactly knowledgeable about how to build a network from scratch. Anyone of the thousands of muggle-borns and half-bloods around here could have come up with _this_ idea, but the plain and simple truth is that none of them did.

_You_ were the first to decide that the Internet could be applied to our world. You were the first to grab a concept that probably has crossed the minds of many others and take it a step further. You didn't just shrug your shoulders and thought that it'd be great if some else did this, no. You decided to give it a go and actually started to research what kind of magic would be needed to make it happen. You were the one who faced the board of governors and strong-armed them into allowing you a trial period of six months.

When this thing happens it'll happen because _you_ worked to make it so, Severus!. No one else is going to jump on _this_ bandwagon and claim ownership of either the inspiration for it or the merit of it's implementation. _This_ is _your_ brainchild. _Your_ accomplishment. Nobody else is going to be allowed to rest on your hard-earned laurels for as long as I have breath. Are we clear on that?"

He was equally shocked and dismayed by that impassioned rant. His dark eyes lifted to confront those bright green orbs and he became ensnared by the sheer fierceness that was flashing within them. Harry reminded him of an electrical storm in times like this, his nature was always so... headstrong and wildly unpredictable. So... intense and terrifyingly emotional. He could be as frighteningly unmovable as a mountain of granite...

Something very much like affection fluttered inside his chest, forcing him to swallow heavily and avert his eyes, lest the child read the warm emotion as it softened his own gaze.

"Have I already complained this evening about how awfully bossy you can be?"

Irreverent laughter met his half-hearted remonstration.

"Come on, Severus! You've got to be fair here. You are so averse to dealing with other people that you'd happily allow your hard work to be claimed by someone else, if it'd get you out of having to face the public."

"I don't see what's so wrong with that idea. The whole program will be instated as a Hogwarts course. If the school gets the recognition for its implementation I get to send Minnie out to deal with all the imbeciles from the ministry. It's a win-win situation that actually saves me from wasting my precious time having to nod and smile pointlessly at one politician or another"

The little brat dared to giggle at that. Merry green eyes were alive with unholy laughter when he eased himself forwards on the chair he was occupying and drummed his restless fingers on the very edge of the desk that separated them.

"I don't know, Severus. Taking into account that most politicians I know would just kneel over and die from the shock of seeing _you_ smile at them, maybe you are doing our world a great disservice by avoiding doing just _that_"

"Potter!" He gasped out loud, perfectly scandalized by that irreverent dig against the very people entrusted to... _lead._. the wizarding world.

The auror exploded into a veritable storm of raucous laughter and he flushed with the mortifying awareness that he was being far too serious about the whole conversation. He tried to ignore the little voice at the back of his head that was whispering insistently that the boy had actually voiced a very valid point and decided to scowl at the little menace as fiercely as he could, instead.

He wasn't too surprised to discover that his glare was mostly ignored in favor of the merriment that seemed to have taken over his companion's mind, and the more Harry laughed, the more ridiculous that the situation became to his own eyes. Here they both were: alone in his office, with not a single witness to their conversation, and he still felt reluctant to acknowledge that the auror was most certainly correct. Most of the highest members of the ministry were a bloody bunch of plonkers. Why shouldn't he say it aloud when he actually thought it?. It wasn't as if Harry would use his agreement to hurt him in the future. Or blackmail him to gain favors, or even betray him for some other unseen reason...

For the very first time his mind finally made peace with a concept that had been hovering at the very edges of his awareness for a few weeks now: he trusted this man who visited him constantly. Who called him every evening to chat about his day. Who always came for tea on Saturday afternoons. Who bought him peppery corn and took him to the cinema...

He felt safe and secure in the boy's company. He understood that he could depend on the boy in the same way that he could depend on Luc or Draco...

As he sat there, staring straight into that laughing young face, he finally allowed himself to accept that he could let his guard down around the auror, knowing that he wouldn't be forced to regret that decision in the future. Certain, at an almost instinctive level, of the fact that he would be protected if needed be. That his privacy, his opinions, his every secret, would be held in confidence. They'd all be kept. Guarded. Carefully protected from the eyes and ears of all of those who'd seek to use that information to cause him untold harm...

"Severus?"

He'd been so thoroughly immersed in his thoughts that he jumped in his seat. Startled black eyes settled over the intent expression that had appeared on the gryffindor's expressive visage and that familiar sense of fluttery vertigo that he'd learned to associate with Harry's presence gripped his flustered senses.

"Where did you go? You seemed to be a million miles away..."

"I was right here, Harry. I was looking straight at you, seeing _you. _Thinking about all the things that you so freely give me without demanding much of anything in return. I worry that I'm becoming... a pampered, selfish, _taker. _A man who won't give back. A monster..."

A puzzled expression fleeted through those emerald orbs for a brief second. The wide brows frowned. The lips pursued in a gesture of mild vexation. A single heartbeat pounded within his ribcage before the gryffindor's searching look attempted to borrow under his very skin.

"I'm happy to give, you know?. And you offer far more than you realize. I can't honestly understand why is it that you can't see yourself in the same way we all do. There's nothing of the selfish in you, Severus. _Nothing!._ I've never met a man less willing to avail himself of help, of honors, of... plain and simple affection as you are!"

"How can you possibly say that?. Rita Skeeter hasn't bothered to stop painting her awful portrait of a poor, pitifully besotted Saviour and you... you keep ignoring the situation. You are actually _fanning_ all kinds of gossip with your insistent determination to appear beside me at every possible opportunity, while I... I've done _nothing_ to defend you. Nothing!. I've allowed _this_ to happen and refused to come right out and say..." His words faltered as he struggled to decide what exactly it was that he'd be willing to allow all others to know. True to be told he wasn't exactly thrilled by the amount of... public interest... that had been so unrelentingly centered upon him of late. The barrage of incendiary articles that the Prophet continued to print had put their friendship in the eye of a storm that seemed to have gripped everyone's imagination.

He was tired of receiving both howlers and increasingly encouraging letters. He was tired of the constant little looks that they received whenever they so much as set a foot outside of Hogwarts. He was tired of feeling... utterly selfish and useless when it came to this situation and he wanted... he wanted to offer some sort of relief to the boy, only he couldn't even begin to imagine what it'd take to make this particular situation better.

"What? What would you say about it, Severus?" The question was released in a chocked, gruff-toned whisper that in no way tried to hide how very important the answer was to the man who had uttered it. All signs of laughter had abandoned that young face, leaving it deadly serious and heartbreakingly earnest.

An oppressive kind of heaviness took the whole room by storm. Turning the very air thick with both, tension and terror. With hopes and with fears. With certainties. With doubts...

He wanted to open his mouth and find the kind of words that could bring the smile back to Harry's face, but he also felt the almost irresistible urge to clam up as tightly as he possibly could. His brain told him to try to protect himself first. To guarantee his own safety by avoiding the exposure of his most vulnerable thoughts before another. He knew by now that he could _deflect_ this question, avoid giving an answer. He knew that Harry would allow him to get away with some half-cocked non-answer, if he really wanted to halt the progress they had made so far.

He could look away, mumble something trite and... remain forever a cripple. A man who could go no further. A coward of the worst kind. A thief, who'd rob even himself of the chance to open his tightly guarded emotions, his locked up heart, and entrust them into the care of another soul. He'd remain the kind of man guilty of being thoroughly _unable_ to... give himself away._.. _and he'd end up exactly where he'd always been: Nowhere.

If he ignored this one moment and carried on as usual he'd be re-enacting the disastrous decisions of his past and he'd end up exactly as he'd once did... alone. Trapped living a life that had nowhere to go. Safe, from the kind of hurt that risking his emotions could cause, but also lethally wounded by the crippling sense of worthlessness that had always afflicted him. That had always entrapped him. That had forced him to become a lonely and bitter shadow, a sharp-tongued wallflower.

His only chance at a future that might, just might, hold something different lay in ignoring his every instinct. In going against his better judgment and take the unthinkable risk of both ridicule and rejection... Would it really be so hard to _brave_ the next few seconds of discomfort in the hopes that the boy... the boy would catch him as he plummeted straight into the unknown?. He was mostly certain that Harry would protect him. Respond to his every action with instinctive, careful gentleness. He had come to the conclusion that he could find beauty here, if he ever risked his heart...

Was this what he _wanted_ then? What he _needed?_ Could Lily's child become that elusive... _shelter..._ that he'd never managed to find?. Even if that was the case, even if he, somehow, found the courage to reach out and received the right response from the child... How long could he possibly keep the interest of so lively a young man? A wizard as curious, as powerful, as amazingly attractive as Harry Potter wouldn't really stay beside a beast like himself for any length of time. Not once the initial novelty of the experience died away. Was he _willing_ to risk _everything_ for a brief, condemned _affair?._

His brow broke into a cold sweat and his throat froze with the kind of terror that could paralyze one's mind. He began to tremble from head to toes with indecision.

"Severus?"

His dark eyes eyes blinked in a dazed, distressed fashion that propelled Harry straight out of his own chair.

A wide, tanned hand reached out to touch him and he froze with the momentous understanding that he couldn't pull away. Couldn't... _reject..._ the approaching touch. Couldn't utter a single word of denial. Or refusal. Couldn't _push_ the other man away. Not in any shape or form. He didn't _want_ to do it, either. Not even if it'd hurt him in the end...

Blunt fingertips brushed his ashen cheekbone with a gentleness that broke the last crumbling remains of his resistance and he blinked once again in sorrow-filled distress. His eyes burned with a million and one tears for the safety he'd just abandoned. For the heartbreak that awaited. For the future that would break him, like the past had done before.

Surrendering himself to the feelings Lily had inspired within him had almost destroyed him. Allowing Harry to become his... _everything..._ could end up only in disaster. It'll demolish him completely. I'll savage his heart, his soul, his every hope for a future lived in _peace_... It'll annihilate him, in the end, without mercy.

I'll also allow him to live, for as long as their association lasted, to the highest, brightest point of his existence. He'll end up plummeting to the ground and bleeding to death from soul-deep wounds, of course. But not before having touched the very stars themselves beside this young man. Not without having reached out for the sun. And the moon. Not before he finally experienced exactly how it felt to love a man who loved him back... Even if such emotions were doomed to end eventually, he'd still have them. Still hold them. He'd keep these memories forever and they... they'd become his life. His all. His everything... They'd eventually become the one treasure that no darkness could destroy.

His face turned into the boy's careful, worried touch and he muzzled against the gryffindor's too warm palm with a calm sense of acceptance. All agitation had now abandoned him. He felt peaceful and utterly certain as he allowed the boy's trembling digits to cup his face as if he were made out some precious, fragile glass. He felt strong in this one second of crystal clear awareness. He understood where this was going and what the price he'd have to pay for this indulgence might become. Surrender... He was going to abandon his every fear and allow himself to surrender before the one man who seemed utterly unable to give up on him. This would be his choice then. He wanted to bask in this safety. He wanted to _belong_ to this stubborn creature. He wanted to allow himself to find out if he could really love again. He knew that he'd never find the answer to that particular question unless he took this risk and, as crazy as it might sound, he was willing to take this chance and suffer the consequences of his own madness and when it all ended... well, he'd worry about the future when it came.

"Severus?" Harry's tone sounded breathless, awed, cautious. The boy's left hand lifted shakily, burying itself in the long locks of his dark hair and began to comb it devotedly. "Severus, are you...? Is this...? Will you allow me to...?"

Words escaped that brave man, apparently. Every attempt to voice the question was abandoned with a gulp. With a sigh. With a terrified reluctance to break the moment. Severus understood that Harry felt overwhelmed and insecure. His every attempt to bring them past mere friendship had backfired. Month upon month of patient, persistent friendship were at risk here. The very foundation of their relationship was about to shift, for better or for worse, and the boy... the boy was frightened.

He could not bring himself to open up any further, though. His heart froze and his brain stopped working altogether. He held neither thought nor fear. He could neither move nor speak. His precious sense of unshakable serenity began to disappear and he was suddenly plunged into breathless, dizzying, anxiety once again. He felt weightless, shapeless, invisible. He had forgotten how to blink and how to hold another's gaze. He had forgotten how to speak, demand, reassure. He couldn't have brought them further than this point, had his life depended on it...

Thankfully, for the both of then, Harry wasn't a gryffindor for nothing. Bravery, foolishness, or some kind of inexplicably perceptive combination of the two, brought the child to his knees beside his chair.

Hands untangled from his hair. Abandoned his pale, cold cheek in order to curl eagerly around his shaking fingers and he swallowed past the lump that was lodged deep inside his throat.

There was a bright look of emerald-green trepidation painting shadows across the limpid beauty of those huge eyes and the smile that Harry gave him was too shaky to be considered anything other than clearly terrified. But it had a tinge of both brightness and hope. A curve of joy-filled expectation. A fleeting glimpse of Heaven.

"What would you tell them, Severus?"

The question returned with much more strength. With urgent eagerness. With the kind of impatient intonation that speaks of deep certainty. Of assurance. Harry thought that he knew what his answer would be. He just needed to hear the words being spoken out loud. The boy needed him to voice his own surrender. Admit to his own needs with the same kind of unequivocal honesty that had been given to him.

His dark eyes widened with startled understanding and he searched his whirling thoughts for the right words. He, who could run rings around most people when it came to the expression of his displeasure, found himself ill-equipped to give voice to his desires. To his hopes. To his every vulnerability.

"I would tell them that you... you are dear to me, Harry. You have a place in my life that can't be labeled as either former student or mere friend. You belong to a totally different category, one that holds you and only you." He finally said, shamefully aware of just how... _lacking..._ his words were. They had been too vague. Too oblique and non-committal. He had _failed_ to put a label to their _us_.

Against all the odds, Harry seemed to find his pitiful offering good enough and allowed his young body to sag, flopping heavily back, against his hind quarters, as if he'd been suddenly released from the hold of a Petrificus hex. A huge smile appeared on that tanned, angular face, turning the boy's whole visage into the very definition of exultant, heartfelt joy. Breathtaking green eyes settled over him with so much affection that he squirmed in his own chair and blushed to the tips of his ears like the most sappy of all hufflepuffs.

"Don't turn away from me now, Severus. Don't you dare to look away. Don't bring unnecessary distance between us just to feel safe..." Harry spoke quietly, but with the kind of firmness that one can't avoid obeying, just as he'd started to avert his own eyes.

Caught red-handed attempting to perform the very act that the boy was so pointedly requesting that he refrained from doing, he just... floundered. His throat constricted around the uncomfortably thick lump that had lodged within it and his eyes turned even darker with fright. He had reached the very end of his rope. Had spent the very last traces of courage left within him. He could not imagine how he could... remain in here, sitting stoically upright, as his horrified mind finally managed to assimilate the fact that he'd just... abandoned all sense and logic. He'd thrown the whole of his future away for the flimsy promise of becoming this child's temporary paramour...

He didn't know what he'd do, how he'd cope with his own idiocy, if the auror didn't find a way to help him move past his own nervousness in the next few seconds. Their gazes held and the moment simply stretched into eternity. It felt odd to find himself so very unbalanced and at the very same time so very... certain... of the fact that there was steady ground beneath his feet. Harry's expression was ablaze with gentleness. With acceptance. With the kind of joy that can't possibly be faked.

"I love you with all of my heart. You do know that, don't you, Severus?"

The question broke the moment so delicately that he shook in breathless reaction, even as his widened eyes filled with a trusting, cautious acceptance.

"Yes, Harry. I... I do know that" His voice sounded choked. Tense. He felt _odd_ as his gaze remained trapped within the hold of those emerald eyes that held so much emotion. He could not bring himself to ask this man to never inquire about the extent of his own feelings. He knew that such request would break the gryffindor, but he wasn't really certain about what his own reaction to such query might be. He wanted more from Harry. Simply... _more._ But he had honestly no clue as to whether his own need for the boy's company could be called mere affection, or desperation, or a crush, or a plain and simple need for some... _companionship._ He refused to put a name to his emotions when he knew not what they were. He had no intention of lying, not to Harry, and he hoped that the auror would step away from an open confrontation on the matter.

"You'll come flying with me, then?"

His heart unfroze at the hopefulness contained in that one, incredibly stubborn little query and his face turned slightly to settle relieved dark eyes over the custom-made broom that the little menace had arrived with. It shone, like the well oiled machine that it truly was, under the soft evening sun-rays that were coming in from the windows.

"I already told you that I'm busy, Harry..." He repeated his original answer to that very same request, once again.

The short, tanned fingers that still held his own squeezed his hands gently, redirecting his attention towards that young and eager face.

"I won't let you fall, Severus. I promise you. I'll never, _ever_, let you fall..."

He heard the reassurance hidden within those words, as clearly as if the promise had been openly given. He heard the avowal of protection and loyalty. Of permanence... just as loudly as he heard the simple offering of physical security that the child was trying to gift him. They were, of course, talking about something far more dangerous than flying. They were talking about a different kind of _falling_ altogether. They were talking about love...

"I know you won't, Harry" He answered quietly. Cautiously. And knew no other way to return the boy's wholehearted devotion than to sigh with wary resignation while he muttered ungraciously:

"Fine!, I'll fly with you. But only for half an hour. I really have to finish reading this information and then I've got a meeting to prepare, I've got to..."

Irreverent, uproarious laughter interrupted him quite rudely and he frowned down into affectionate green eyes. Harry rose to his feet in a swift motion and the hand that was still fastened to his own pulled him off his chair with almost insulting ease.

"You should shut up right about now, Severus, or I might decide that you are stressing yourself too much over your job and keep you in the air until every bone in your body has turned to liquid in my arms..."

He huffed in ruffled discomfort. A dizzying kind of trepidation was coursing through his every vein at the promise of being on the receiving end of that kind of attention and he didn't really know how to react to it.

Still linked by the hands they walked towards the broom until Harry could hold it in his free palm. Then his companion turned slightly towards him. Green eyes searched his face with a thoughtful, earnest intensity and his hand was released very briefly. A callused palm flew up and down his left arm in a soothing, comforting motion and the smile that was bestowed upon him felt like a blessing.

"This is your last chance to back out, Severus Snape. I'll never ask you this question again, OK?... Are you sure about _this_? Are you really, truly sure, that _this_ is what you want?"

The fact that the question was asked, no matter how obliquely, settled the wild terror that had been screaming in the back of his mind for him to retreat. His answering smile was shaky. Uneasy. It was there, though, no matter how fragile it did look, and Harry wasted not another second before seizing the chance that he himself had given him.

"Then hold on to me tightly, Headmaster, because we are about to embark on the best ride of our lives..." The infernal brat boasted shamelessly before proceeding to grab him with startling strength and jump onto the broom in the kind of swift and graceful motion that only a gifted flier could perform.

He was shocked, by the unexpectedness of the maneuver, straight into a defensive motion. Harry's arms tightened around his waist then, trying to soothe him. Settling him firmly in front of the auror's own form, atop the broom. He'd ended up plastered against the youth's athletic chest, caged protectively between a pair of tanned arms that efficiently controlled their stomach-churning progress, as they avoided the heavy furniture inside the room before hurling, at top speed, out of the window.

The crisp cold of the chilly December evening hit his face the moment they abandoned the cozy warmth of his office and his whole body recoiled in reaction to the sudden dip in temperature.

"OH!... I forgot about the weather. Silly me..." A masculine chuckle shock the wide expansion of chest against which his bony back was resting and he felt it rumble all along the chord of his spine, like a deep and mesmerizing caress. Minty breath tickled his left ear as the boy whispered against it quietly.

"Hold on to the broom for a second, Severus... I'm going to make sure we don't freeze to death today..." A second later Harry's right hand had abandoned the handle and a wand suddenly appeared at the very edge of his vision. The Calorem Invocare* charm was cast, very softly, against his temple in the very next breath and a bubble of gently warmed air surrounded the broom at once. Harry's wand was put away and, as the boy's hand returned to take proper control of their ride, Severus' rigid muscles began to relax slowly and he allowed himself to open his narrowed dark eyes and look around.

Hogwarts extended beneath him under the weak evening sunlight like a postcard-perfect picture of winter-time placidity. The lake mirrored the sky. Frothy-looking snow shone a dazzling diamond white under the sun and the castle itself seemed to rise towards the fluffy clouds like the old spires of a long-lost, ancient temple.

He'd forgotten the easy pleasure of flying for the sake of it...

He'd never truly enjoyed the activity. Never had either the time or the inclination to discover what exactly was so great about it that it drove nutcases like Sirius Black to rant and rave about it's wonders all the time. He'd been a dirt-poor half-blood who never had the opportunity to fly a broom until he reached Hogwarts. He'd been so cruelly ridiculed and laughed at, by a sneering crowd of pure-blooded gryffindors bent on jeering at his every attempt to conquer what, for him, had been a truly onerous task, that he'd failed to develop a true liking for the activity.

Flying had lost all of it's appeal for him before he'd even learned to do it properly and so... he'd always _lacked_ interest in pursuing it. Lacked any kind of enthusiasm for it and had missed out on the simple beauty of watching the world go by under his feet...

A contented sigh escaped his lips and his shoulders relaxed further. He allowed himself to lean back, against the solid chest of his companion, when Harry's arms pressed against him gently. His head rolled against the boy's hard shoulder as he looked around some more. Relaxing even further. Surrendering complete control of their safety, of the direction towards which they were heading, of the whole situation, to the boy.

They flew slowly. Carefully. Silently.

Harry seemed content enough to travel at a sedate pace, for once, and simply twirled around the perimeter of the school with soothing quietness. There were no sounds up here. Everything was eerily calm and silent and the world seemed easier, somehow. Conquerable. Not so harsh or lethally treacherous. More beautiful...

Against his own expectations the gryffindor remained quiet. Apparently happy enough with the strange status quo they had entered and he felt his own reluctance, his every insecurity, his very real sense of terrified vulnerability melt away like wisps of clouds.

"Is this all right, Severus?" After such a long silence that softly voiced question made him blink languidly. His head turned very slightly and his dark eyes clashed with the bright emerald gaze that was studying him intently.

"It is perfect, Harry"

"So you aren't getting bored?"A strong chin rested against the top of his head when he turned away to look around them once more. He felt the odd pressure that came from the settling of the boy's jawbone atop his head clearly. It sat heavily on his skull and it was so strange a feeling that he could not immediately decide whether he liked it or not.

"It's beautiful up here. I... I don't think I ever bothered to look around much whenever I was forced to get onto a broom" He answered quietly, lulled into uttering that uncharacteristic confession by the inexplicable sense of ... _peacefulness..._ that seemed to be taking over the whole of his being at that second.

Harry's arms tightened around him.

"I'm not surprised. You are always so busy achieving things that I don't think it crosses your mind to slow down and just... _be._ Does it?. I only ever see you quiet down when you are lost inside a book, it's so strange... Sometimes I think that you need to prove to yourself that you have a right to exist, or something. It's as if being idle makes you nervous, as if you honestly believe that you have to be useful at all the times..."

He was surprised at how accurately the gryffindor could peg him and even more floored when the awareness that he was actually _able_ to understand exactly why the boy was sounding more and more outraged with every new word he uttered finally hit him. He was actually genuinely shocked by the realization that he wasn't being criticized for daring to _live_ while others hadn't. Wasn't being asked to _justify_ all those lucky escapes that had kept him safe while others perished. He wasn't being _valued_ any less than anybody else. Wasn't being _challenged_ to prove himself to be _worthy._

"I think I might be a bit of an overachiever"

"Only a bit?" The snort that accompanied that teasing question made him smile and he realized that he felt contented up here, flying lazily high above Hogwarts' frozen grounds with Harry Potter.

"I might not be entirely adverse to repeating this, you know?. I think I'm having... _fun" _The simple acknowledgment caught him as much by surprise as it must have caught the boy for the broom stilled in mid air and they simply hovered there: twirling gently in a bubble of warm air above the dark waters of the lake. Two lone figures being bathed in golden sunlight by the last rays of the day as the distant star began to sink beneath the purple line of the horizon.

Harry's callused fingers settled on his chin and he was carefully maneuvered until his body was turned sideways atop the expensive handle of the broom. Green eyes settled on his face and emerald fire blazed out, from the very depths of those intently focused orbs, to scorch him within an inferno of chaotic, joy-tinged emotions.

"I'm going to kiss you again, Severus... I'm going to do it right now. Right here. If you don't want this to happen you better say so now..."

His brain froze. He could not move a single eyelash. His ebony gaze widened as his every thought was snared by that darkening green haze of passionate tenderness. His breath halted as that face slowly descended towards his own, giving him plenty of time to pull away.

He felt the brush of Harry's breath touch the surface of his trembling lips a mere blink before the other man's mouth settled over his.

For the second time in his life he experienced the same disorienting sense of incredulous surprise. Of overwhelmed nervousness. He was tense and terrified. He knew not how to react and he could tell that he was utterly stiff and unresponsive. Harry eased back slowly and soft green eyes that were alive with... _love... _gazed down at him with patient adoration.

"Let yourself go, Severus, just... let yourself go. Trust your safety into my hands, I promise I'll catch you..."

Soft pink lips caressed his own once more. They were careful, so careful... They began to lave his trembling, dry skin with a moist warmth. Gentle pressure was applied against his mouth slowly, so very slowly, and his head was held like a treasure between a pair of strong tanned hands.

The tension that had been keeping his neck so very stiff unfurled like a flower and he abandoned all rigidity at once. His dark eyes closed. His cheeks flushed and he whimpered in distressed anxiety only a second before he _surrendered_ his every sense to the overwhelming flash of enraptured intensity that was coursing throughout his body like a wave made out of sunlight.

Heat radiated from his lips outwards, enfolding him in a pleasurable blanket of soft emotion. It was gentle and it was loving. It was beautifully tender. It was delicate and fragile, like the blessing of an angel...

He gasped aloud as the sensation coiled within him, curling in the pit of his stomach before rising swiftly upwards, filling his every cell with a series of interconnected star-bursts of sensation that turned his whole body into water. Into putty. Into a brainless, pulsing mass of nothing but warmth and pleasure. He gasped in startled, awestruck wonder and the mouth holding him captive swallowed the sound whole. A tongue probed the seam of his half-opened lips and he gave hesitant permission to further invasion by opening himself wider.

Harry entered him like a hurricane, like a soldier returning home, like a whirlwind seeking quietude... Renewed fire erupted inside his veins in the next second: lava was poured into his virgin mouth like a river of molten desire and he felt dizzy with the sensations that were thrumming through his cells. He was being utterly possessed. Devoured. Taken. He was being broken and re-formed. He was being kissed straight into a re-birth.

Harry's fingers coiled in his hair holding him fast. That chest burned against his side like Fiendfire, keeping him hot and bothered, utterly unbalanced. He was being scorched, from the inside out, in a conflagration of emotion that was turning his whole being into a pool of pounding blood and reeling senses. He was being _murdered_ with passion...

The kiss ended and he suddenly found himself on the receiving end of the most beautiful expression that he'd ever seen. No one had ever looked at him with that breathtaking mix of blissed-out exuberance and hopeful tenderness. Harry's gaze was diamond-bright. A thin layer of crystal-clear teardrops was glazing the green beauty of the huge orbs that gazed down at him with evident devotion.

"I love you, Severus Snape. I have loved you now for a very long time. Even if _you_ can't bring yourself yet to believe that _this_ can last, I'm willing to spend the rest of my life proving you wrong. For now, though: Thank you, Severus, just... THANK YOU!"

He swallowed with difficulty and attempted a smile that must have come out as confused, as spooked, as truly... unbalanced... as he himself was feeling, if the soft look that he obtained in response was anything to go by.

"Thank you? Thank you for what, Harry?"

Rough fingertips framed his cheekbones carefully, pushing long locks of midnight-colored hair away from his pale face and looping them, very slowly, around the shell of his left ear. A blunt thumb traced the bottom line of his kiss-swollen mouth with delicate affection.

"Thank you for surviving. For being _you._ For daring to come flying with me today... Thank you for being brave enough to open this door, my love..."

TBC...

*Calorem Invocare roughly translates as to conjure warmth. Special thanks regarding the correct Latin form of this spell are to be given to Tree of Angels who was kind enough to let me know that I had made a mistake on my first try.


	35. Chapter 35

**THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 35**

Being kissed by Harry Potter was a dizzyingly addictive pastime. The more it happened the more he craved it and he'd been shocked to discover that they both seemed to be unable to... _converse... _for any length of time without coming into some sort of physical contact nowadays. Harry liked to touch him constantly. He liked to grab him by the hand or hold his wrist. He called his attention by tapping him on the shoulder. He loved twirling his long hair around a tanned finger, or pushing it away from Severus' face by the simple action of curling it behind his ear. The boy seemed to just... plain and simply _love _him.

Despite his own unacknowledged certainty that the young auror would soon tire of him, they became even closer, spending almost all of their free time together sconced in either Severus' office or his rooms.

Christmas arrived just a few weeks after they'd became... kissing buddies... and, although Harry insistently tried to convince him that he should come with him to the Burrow and join in the Weasley clan celebrations for the holiday, he refused to do so with stubborn adamancy.

Every time Harry insisted that they should spend the vacation together he felt his very guts twist with cold dread. He wasn't ready to face anyone's opinion about this. Wasn't ready to bring the exact nature of their association out into the open and he knew the boy's loving displays would be impossible to curve while in the presence of all those he considered family, so he stuck to his unyielding resolution to refuse each and every possible variation of a Weasley-holiday-invitation that he was presented with, alleging that this would be the first year since the war when he'd be actually conscious on Christmas day and Draco deserved to have the pleasure of having his godfather back at home.

He could tell that the boy saw clearly through this explanation and was utterly certain that, no matter how logical or well prepared his arguments might have been, Harry could tell that he was just too afraid to come out into the open and confront public opinion about their... partnership. The sudden deepening of their relationship had remained largely unacknowledged, as far as he was aware, and he felt it was too early to... intrude into the boy's real life, so to speak. He'd remained so firm on that one point that no amount of arguing or cajoling had managed to solve the situation and, eventually, he'd been forced to glare at the bloody brat and threaten him with apparating himself straight into Luc's French Cottage, if he didn't stop pressuring him to face the Weasleys over a plate of Christmas turkey.

He had detested Harry's extreme reaction to those words with every fiber of his being, though. He'd felt guilty for having uttered them. Couldn't forget the hurt expression they had brought to the boy's beautiful eyes and, for a while, they'd both became hesitant and wary in each other's company. He'd felt bad for hurting the child, even in this minute way, and Harry... Harry had once told him that he didn't want to push him into committing to their relationship before he, himself, felt ready to do so...

Despite his own worries that the auror might loose interest in him and use the new strain in their interactions to... push him slowly away from his busy life, Harry persisted doggedly. Returning to his fire-calls and Saturday visits for tea. Kissing him, with ever-increasing desperation, at the end of every meeting and then looking straight at him as he slowly backed away. Dragging himself backwards, towards the doorway with such obvious reluctance that the experience of watching the boy struggle to abandon his office became an absolute torture that Severus could barely withstand.

As the students finally left for their vacation Hogwarts became a silent, forlorn husk. Ninety per cent of the teachers left the premises as soon as the kids did and he was left mostly alone. He rattled through the corridors and ate beside the fireplace in his office, unwilling to descend into the echoing _emptiness_ of the Great Hall. To his shocked surprise he discovered that he missed the constant noise of the students. He missed the unending rants of his professors as they came up to him in the evenings to complain about this or that child. Or to argue their case for being granted new equipment or permission to change their lesson plan slightly...

He missed the loud cheering of unruly Quiditch practices and the constant flare of his fireplace as a hundred or so people attempted to draw his attention constantly every day.

Christmas day approached and with it everything slowed down. The grounds were heavy with snow and the air outside was too cold to brave a walk around the lake. Harry was busy with both work and family. The Weasleys who lived abroad began descending on the burrow and the boy had a number of obligations that were apparently unavoidable, like visiting Andromeda Black and her grandson or spending a whole weekend holed up with Seamus Finnegan somewhere on the Irish coast. Harry visited the families of aurors that had either retired during the year or perished while in the line of duty. He made time to catch up with Longbottom and the Lovegoods and even braved muggle London to go dine with Mr and Mrs Granger...

Severus had been invited to accompany the boy to every single one of those, too, but he'd declined them all without a second thought. Now he wished he'd accepted at least one. He felt lonely. He was bored. He understood that he hadn't been forgotten, but still felt as if his presence in the boy's life was a fragile and easily replaceable occurrence...

As one day slowly shifted into another and the unusual idleness began to drive him crazy he decided to return to his beloved lab. He hadn't had a single second to brew since his return. Not that he could do much, with his frequently erratic magic, but still... He could sort through unprepared ingredients. Check the potion stores and see if there was anything simple enough that needed to be made. If he encountered any trouble he could always recruit a castle elf to assist with the magical aspect of the potions...

The vacation became a blur of reading up on an amazingly extensive backlog of potion articles, sleepless nights and increasingly successful simple brews that allowed a new hope to grow within him. He began to realize that he missed working in the lab. He missed the austere and soothing constraints of his profession. He missed the intellectual challenge of attempting to perfect a working potion. Of imposing his own will over the natural reactions of a seemingly random mixture of ingredients.

Harry dropped by in the afternoons, whenever he was free, and laughed when he found him engrossed in the frowning contemplation of a gently bubbling cauldron. Those green eyes shone with a deep and unrestrained joy that he still found very difficult to respond to. Invariably he'd give up whichever project he'd been working on, leaving his precious brews under one of the boy's carefully placed stasis charms, and proceeded to sit beside the menace in a vain attempt at stifling the bloody child's amusement.

"You shouldn't stop your brewing for my benefit, Severus. I actually love to see you doing something that you so clearly enjoy..."

"I can't concentrate on it with you looking at me like that. It's like having a creepily young reincarnation of Albus looking over my shoulder"

They would sit side by side and spend a couple of hours chatting about the latest Weasleys to arrive or the horribly difficult task of buying a Secret Santa present for the manager of the auror's emergency floo-call network. As the afternoon turned into early evening outside, filling the lab windows with ever-increasing darkness, Harry would describe his plans for the rest of the evening in detail. He'd outline the food he'd eat, the games of chess he'd lose to Ronald, the newest fairy tale that he was reading to Theodore Lupin nowadays, even the gifts he was planing on getting for this or that one of his friends.

"Hermione and Ron, they are both easy. Even Mrs. Weasley and Andromeda are a piece of cake. But the one that really gets me every year is Mr. Malfoy. He's never liked anything I've gotten him so far and I... I can't give it up for a lost cause now, you know?. The less he likes what I got him, the more I tell myself that next year I'll nail it. Now I'm stuck between getting him another pin for his hair or a silk handkerchief"

He'd stilled in the act of taking a sip from his teacup, dark eyes widened with the kind of bewildered astonishment that brought another one of those annoyingly bright smiles to the boy's face.

"Luc... You've been buying Yule presents for Luc?"

Harry's laughter filled the office and a hand that was as bold as it was gentle rose up to steady his slightly tilting teacup in the next second.

"Don't look so shocked, Severus. It all started as a ploy to force the man into letting me inside his house to see you. I told him I'd bought you something for Christmas, and I couldn't very well show on his doorstep without having at least some token to offer him and his family, so... my first try was Firewhiskey, which he proceeded to snottily inform me that was actually from a reasonably decent label if you couldn't afford a proper brand."

"You told him that... Wait. _Wait..._ You've been buying Yule presents for _me?"_

He was so genuinely shocked that he gaped at the child and it wasn't until he felt the boy's hands actually tug the saucer, that he still held between his hands, away from his slightly trembling grasp that he finally managed to blink and avert his uncomprehending dark eyes away.

"I wanted to see you. I got you a muggle recording machine that I bullied Hermione into charming for the purpose of reading potions texts out loud to you. You were still locked within your coma, Severus, and I... I wanted to help you in any way I could. That's the first ploy of mine that managed to get me past the manor's front door. After that... well, we all warred with each other for some time. Everything became easier once the Malfoys began to accept that I did genuinely want to help you.

As my feelings for you began to take shape, things also became harder around Yule. The holidays came and went, year after year, without bringing us any nearer to solving your situation. I began to wish for your recovery on New Year's Eve and on my birthdays. On Beltane. On Litha... I prayed to every God or Fairy I've ever heard about and still nothing worked.

I began to look at shop displays and see things that I'd love to get you for Christmas and I began to dream of a life far away from reality. A life lived beside you, a life where your eyes were wide open and you slept only at night. A life where you'd unwrap my presents with a smile on your lips and kiss me lovingly..."

His heart froze within his chest upon hearing this confession. He had known the boy had cared for him very deeply even before his waking, but... to hear him actually confess having invented a whole dream-like relationship felt so strange...

"Then I'm sure I'm disappointing your every expectation, Harry. I bet the version of me that you, so thoroughly, imagined wouldn't have refused to accompany you to the Weasley's for dinner..."

Gentle finger-pads settled on the side of his jaw and forced his head slowly around, until their eyes clashed once again. Harry's face looked both serious and tender. His eyes shone bright green with the kind of patient affection of a wise, far older man.

"They were only dreams. They were fragile things that left me utterly empty every sunrise. They held me a captive of my own impossible desires, while offering me not a smidgen of the hope that your actual presence brings me. You might not be as... accommodating... as the man I dreamed up tended to be, but you are both more real and more _you _than he ever was. I know that I've been a pain in your arse with my insistence that you join us all for dinner, but... I do actually understand _why_ you are being so cautious about it. This is too new, isn't it?. You are feeling threatened by the... _homeliness_... of the celebrations all around us and you don't want to rush into family entanglements until you feel far more certain of the strength of this relationship.

I might not _like_ your doubting, Severus, but I get what's causing it, even if I don't always acknowledge that. I'm perfectly aware that I care for you at this exact moment far more deeply than you care for me. I had four whole years to accept that I do love you. I have dreamed about how it'd feel to finally have you around for so long that I just... I was blinded with the possibilities of it for a while. They won't come true this year, that's a given. But there's always next year, and the one after that... "

His throat clamped there and then and he was utterly unable to formulate a single sentence in response. The fire crackled loudly inside the hearth and amber tinged flame-light painted the boy with heavy, golden colored shadows. He became literally transfixed by the beauty he beheld. The boy was breathtakingly lovely... His eyes shone and his mouth smiled, his dark hair looked wild and his face held such expression of devoted adoration that Severus felt his own mind shatter with the awareness that this man was the one thing that he had woken for.

Everything, _everything,_ he'd encountered in this new chance at life that he was now enjoying had come, in one way or another, from this source. Harry Potter had pulled him out from permanent destruction. He'd have perished without the boy's unwanted intrusion inside his mind. He'd have drifted away from a life that he'd been willing to abandon and would have never come to learn that he could feel like this...

"You should get Luc one of those impossibly annoying muggle puzzles. My father used to have that little box that one could never really align into proper colored rows... The Rubik's cube, that's the name of it. It'll drive Luc absolutely crazy with irritation, it'll intrigue him, too. I'd bet he'll be impressed with it, even if he never admits it" He stuttered that advice in a low and obviously nervous tone of voice, feeling suddenly awkward and unsettled. As he pulled his face away from Harry's fingers he could see the boy looking at him with worried puzzlement but he couldn't bring himself to hold that gaze for a single second longer.

The small silence that followed was strained and wary. Harry was looking at him intently and his own eyes remained stubbornly fixed over the dancing flames. His every muscle began to cramp with a kind of expectant rigidity that he couldn't really explain and he had to grit his teeth, in order to force himself to appear relaxed. He felt on edge and over-sensitized to every movement, every blink, every breath the boy dared to take. He felt hyper-aware of both Harry and himself. He felt sickened with tension and desired, more than anything, to get up from the couch and return to his abandoned potion. To lose himself in the absorbing task of pondering which ingredient to add next and in which quantity, in order to improve a recipe that had been already working for centuries...

His mind reeled with the awareness that he longed for the obliviousness of former days. Maybe he'd always been this way. Maybe he'd failed to identify Regulus' crush on him because he'd never really _desired_ to actually see it...

Had he always used his potions work to hide away from the real world? Had he always been this... _reluctant_ to step out, into the disturbingly uncertain arena of interpersonal relationships, and stay the course?... He'd befriended Luc and Cissy. He'd befriended Minnie, Albus... but all of them had soothing, careful personalities that tended to _relent_ before pushing him as hard as Harry liked to do.

He was suddenly vexed with his own lacking courage. With his own never-ending store of weak excuses and his constant, irritating backpedaling. He could not actually understand why Harry bothered to pursue him at all... the poor boy could surely do better than him... Maybe he should just tell the auror to go find somebody else and be done with all of this!. Harry was young and attractive enough to have a reasonable chance of building a life for himself that didn't force him to walk on eggshells around a man as damaged and wary as he, himself, was...

His neck jerked around wildly and his devastated dark eyes settled over the auror. His lips opened to say something, despite the fact that he had no actual idea of what it was exactly that he could possibly say. The boy took one single look at him and jumped to his feet, startling him into backing himself against the backrest of the couch.

A pained sort of breathless silence followed and they looked straight at each other with wide-eyed trepidation. He could tell that Harry was quite flustered. He was anxiously pushing visibly shaking hands through his wild hair while his wide chest expanded with the strain of accommodating the unusually deep breaths that he was taking. After a second or two the gryffindor's hand lowered towards a jeans covered hip. Tanned fingers curled, almost reflexively, into a white-knuckled fist that betrayed a great tension and those eyes, bright green and fierce, pinned him to the spot with nothing but the power of the emotions they reflected.

"Whatever it is that's crossing your mind right now, I want you to leave it unvoiced until tomorrow, Severus. I don't _know_ what I said to spook you this badly, but... I rather not listen to any of your little nuggets of self-deprecating despair. We both need out of this place, I think. We need to do something that can distract you from all those little voices that are screaming warnings in your mind against the idea of us getting any closer. We need to settle your nerves, somehow, and try to just... _survive._.. this second, OK?"

He was so shocked by the fact that the boy had actually read him like a book that he blinked with dazed astonishment.

"I... yes. Yes. I... I need your help, Harry. I'm... I don't know what's wrong with me!"

His harshly voiced admission shattered the tension with which his companion was holding himself upright and Harry ended up taking a single step back, towards the sofa, and falling heavily to his knees right in front of him. That young, pale face looked straight into his own as the boy's hands curled tenderly around his fingers.

"You are panicking, Severus. You are over-thinking everything, as usual, and worrying past all sanity about things that aren't probably worth it. You are scaring me to death with these stunts!.

I... I don't honestly _know_ what it'll take for you to finally get that I'm _not_ _leaving._ I don't _want_ a dream version of you. I don't _want_ a better, younger, kinder, cuter what's-his-name to take your place, either, so... you can start forgetting the suggestion that I might as well walk out and find myself somebody else!.

You've accepted my kisses now. You've accepted far more from me than I ever thought you would. You've given me the kind of hope that I refuse to abandon and that means that you'll just have to learn to ignore whatever doubts are trying to settle in your mind, because they are all stupid and unnecessary, anyway. Do you understand me?"

His hands held onto the child's with almost compulsive need. His eyes shone ebony bright with a thankful sort of acceptance and he swallowed his every misgiving with a mighty effort of will.

"I don't think I deserve you, Harry..."

"Ssshhss... _Ssshhss_!. I can't bear to hear you tell me that!"

"But... it's _true._ Don't you see?. Look at how much being with me hurts you... I move forwards and then backwards, like a crazed, backpedaling _coward,_ and the only one who suffers here is you!. I... I..."

Blunt-tipped fingers pressed against his lips firmly, stilling the flow of his words mid-rant. He became lost in the enraged fierceness that was flashing emerald warnings from the depths of those bespectacled eyes.

"It's too _soon._.. that's all, Severus!. Christmas has come too soon for you to cope with the added expectations of the holiday, and it hasn't helped any that I've been... _overenthusiastic..._ about it.

I'm sorry that I've been pushing you. I really am. I'm even more sorry that you are stressing yourself over what you see as your own faults, when they are actually mine!.

It's not your problem that I've waited four long years for this moment... You aren't responsible for the fact that I've built a million dreams about a life that you never actually agreed to share with me. You need to give yourself some time. You need to think less about me and more about your own wishes, your own _wants._

You need to behave not like the man you think I deserve, but like the man you truly are!. Your courage isn't measured by how fast you go from kissing me in your office to appearing by my side at the Weasley's table, Severus. Your courage is measured in smaller, far more difficult things. It's measured by the fact that you are still here, in this room, sitting on _this_ couch and listening to _me._ It's measured in the way you hold on to my hands. In the fact that, although you are clearly ambivalent about letting me take charge, you are still doing it..."

"Following your lead when it comes to us isn't brave of me at all, Harry. That's plain survival instinct, don't you see? I know that you are far better in this area than I have ever been"

The boy's smile softened with tenderness and one of the hands that had held onto his own so tightly rose to tangle with his hair.

"Why don't we agree to disagree on this, my love? I'm afraid we'll never see eye to eye otherwise"

He forced himself to relax visibly. Taking a single deep breath, to give himself some strength, he lifted his own hand and settled it, almost timidly, on Harry's own head. Soft tufts of the boy's thick hair tickled his fingers, as he buried them in the unexpectedly silky softness that they encountered, and he felt his barely-hidden tension dissolve into a contented sense of achievement when the boy became, literally, paralyzed with obvious surprise. Harry's green eyes widened impossibly and a soft, pinkish flush tainted his cheeks as he gasped and submitted to his hesitant caress with obvious relish.

"Please... don't stop, Severus. I'll kneel right here, before you, for the rest of eternity, I promise you!. Just... don't stop touching me like this."

He smiled then, amused by the dramatic eagerness the child could so easily display.

"That might end up killing us both with hunger, don't you think?. I thought you had somewhere else to be this evening, anyway..."

Harry's groan was a wonderful balm for his own restless and unfocused fears, managing to relax him even further.

"I can always fire-call Molly and tell her I'm too busy. I've been to dinner at the burrow four times this week already and I've got to show up tomorrow for Bill's welcome-home bash, anyway. Would it be too much for you if I stay a little longer, Severus? We could share whatever food the elves bring you. We could eat right here, by the fireplace... I promise I'll behave, I won't make uncomfortable avowals of devotion or any other insinuations about our future together. That's what did it, wasn't it? When I said we'll have next Christmas to look forward to?"

His hand halted mid-stroke and Harry's face lifted. They stared at one another in the increasingly thick silence while his eyes widened with dazed self-awareness and the boy waited for a response.

"I don't think you understand how the patience that you show me manages to humble me every single time, Harry. I keep waiting for it all to run dry, but you... you seem to be... _forbearing._.. beyond all logic. I don't _want_ to make you a promise that I can't keep. I don't _want_ to allow myself to hurt you any further than I already am. I believe that you and I are a work in progress... A work with a fifty-fifty chance of success.

I wish I could erase my fears and respond to you the way you want me to, but I... I think you are right. It is too soon...

Dinner by the fireplace sounds fine and yes, I'll be grateful if we talk only on terms of today or tomorrow. Maybe even next week might be acceptable, but I don't _want_ to think about next year or the one after that. Not yet. I want to live in this second for a while. I want to enjoy this evening, without having to feel worried about where you are expecting it all to end. That's not too much to ask, is it?"

The boy flexed his lower limbs carefully, bringing his whole body upwards and forwards very slowly, until their faces stood a mere breath apart. There was a tender smile in those lips that flashed unvoiced reassurances straight into his heart. His face was held then very gently, warm fingers cupped the pale skin of his cheeks and the soft-voiced whisper that answered his question brushed against his drying lips like the mind-numbing enchantment of an ancient Fire Fae.

"Anything you ask, Severus. I will give you anything and everything you need..."

He had no time to respond before the boy closed the barely-there distance that still separated them and joined their mouths in a kiss that seemed to be overflowing with serenity. His lips trembled before they opened to the child's welcome invasion and his shoulders were then seized, very carefully, in order to bring his head down ever so slightly. The kiss deepened slowly, so slowly... like a spark that's nursed skilfully into a blaze. His mind spun round and round. His senses reeled. His body shook in instinctive reaction to every overwhelming sensation that assaulted it.

Harry held him through it all. Tethered him back to reality and straight into the safety of his strong arms. He felt cherished and at peace. He felt bold, courageous, worthy... the kiss ended with them both breathing in each other's exhalations of warm air and it felt as if the world held only them.

The office was quiet and the fire shone brightly in the hearth, painting them both with gold and dark gray shadows. Outside the winter wind raged across the grounds of Hogwarts, but right here they were both warm and protected. They were _home._ Their eyes locked and their hands entwined of their own accord. He pulled on the boy's digits firmly, forcing the auror to first raise and then sit beside him once again.

"I don't like to see you kneeling, Harry"

He explained when the auror looked at him askance and didn't quite know how to answer when the little brat dared to chuckle softly under his breath and then proceeded to shock him right out of his mind when he whispered roughly, fervently:

"I only ever kneel for you, Severus. Only for you... No one else has ever managed to make me feel as weakened, as humble, as you can make me feel. No one else has ever managed to make me feel as strong, either..."

TBC...


	36. Chapter 36

_**THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 36.**_

New year came and went, bringing a new sense of purpose to them all. The students returned with a renewed zest for misbehavior and the school became alive with the thrumming of young magic once again. The weather outside remained cold and unappealing, keeping everyone copped up within the school, and the corridors filled with unruly pranksters and their severely annoyed teachers. After enduring two whole weeks of overly boisterous behavior Severus set out to teach the student body how unwise it was to irritate him beyond patience.

Fed up of dealing with the utter nonsense caused by the unruliness of his copped up pupils he finally rose from his chair one evening and slowly approached Albus' announcement podium. He'd never even touched the dammed thing before and he wasn't particularly happy to be doing so right at that second, but... there wasn't much else left for him to do.

He proceeded then to inform his appalled student body of his decision to have the Room of Requirement arrange itself as a gymnasium, where he expected to see each and every one of them exercising, in some form, at least one hour a day.

The Ravenclaws gaped at him with such horror that he felt like laughing wildly and the Slytherins frowned in puzzled confusion. The Huffleppufs looked utterly floored and only the Gryffindors showed some sort of mild enthusiasm at the prospect of being granted an outlet for their excessive levels of energy.

Things returned to a more manageable routine after that and he was stopped every now and then by one prefect or another, asking him if they could get this or that sports equipment. At some point the children began to exchange stories about the kind of games they played at home and this led to some of them trying to branch out into some exclusively muggle activities that became a great success almost overnight.

The board of governors seemed stunned at the increasingly long list of material that he presented to them for approval, but other than a few timid questions about what was the purpose of a racquetball or why anyone needed a bat to play baseball instead of a "base" no one actually denied him the funds to purchase his new equipment.

As the children began to take interest in all kinds of sports, so did their parents and, eventually, the general population followed their lead. It amused him to see something so simple turned into a fantastic achievement that he'd apparently plotted and fought for with tooth and nail. He shook his head in wonder and ignored the ridiculous praise as best as he could thinking mostly nothing of it, until the unthinkable happened, and Luc arrived in his office so fast that his head began to spin with the uncomfortable awareness of just how very closely he was being watched by everyone around him.

"Draco tells me that, in America, muggles play this baseball game in fields that are as big as Quidditch ones. People come to watch these matches and eat dogs, can you believe it, Severus? This bloody muggles have an absolutely appalling taste in food!"

He stared at his aristocratic friend's revolted face for a long and shocked second, utterly unable to decide how to react. Laughter was bubbling up his throat in a wave of uncontrollable mirth but he attempted to remain as soberly solemn as he possibly could for the sake of his friend's pride. He ended up bitting his lower lip so hard that he tasted blood and pinched the crooked nub on top of his long nose for good measure.

"They don't eat real dogs, Luc" He managed to point out, after a second or two, and found himself on the receiving end of a totally horrified yelp of appalled disgust.

"They eat fake ones? Oh!... that is even more gross. Wait. Wait... How do they fake them? Do they have some intriguing machine that can harness the power of transfiguration?. You should see what they can do with the Lumos spell, Severus. It's incredible!... I've been fortunate enough to have been invited into Arthur Weasley's garden shed and I must say... the man has a point when he insists that the muggles are absolutely fascinating. They can perform Lumos on a grand scale with a flick of a little thing they call a switch. It's a magnificent sight. They bring light to entire cities with those switches, you know? It's called electricity. That's the same thing they use for your Internet network, too. I believe we should try to find out how to do just that with magic now that we are finally done with your web. Wouldn't it be wonderful to cast a single Lumos here and have the magic transfer itself everywhere in the castle at once?"

The question piqued his curiosity almost instantly and he looked at his friend through narrowed eyes. He'd been around the other man long enough to see this blatant attempt at manipulation for what it truly was.

"Luc... Why are you here?"

"Goodness, Severus!, anyone who hears you would think I only ever visit you out of interest. I haven't seen you since the holidays. You must come for tea some time. Cissy is worried about your health, you know?. She's convinced that you are working far too much and Draco tells me that you blasted half the hufflepuff table the other day with a bout of accidental magic..."

His head rose from the thick sheaf of papers that he'd been half-heartedly browsing and his shoulders became suddenly tense.

"Nothing happened, Luc, I swear. The children weren't even in the room at the time. We were trying to arrange the Great Hall so that the students could hold a friendly match of Cambok* when it happened. I spoke to Max and he seemed happy enough to let it go... Is the board going to suspend me over it?"

Appraising gray eyes settled on his pale face for a long moment and he held the look with as much quiet dignity as he could possibly muster. He hadn't wanted the job when he'd first gotten it, but he'd learned to enjoy the freedom that it gave him.

He liked coming up with new ways for the children to enjoy the sometimes arduous task of learning. He'd always adored the process of enriching his own voraciously curious mind with something new, but he understood that there were some kids out there who required some incentives to produce outstanding work. He honestly believed that he could make a difference there. He could implement newer and slightly more appealing techniques that should grab the attention of these children and focus it on their studies. He'd received nothing but compliments so far. His staff was content, for the most part, and the statistical data for the last nine-week period of academic work showed a thirty two per cent improvement over last year's results for the same period...

"You are the best thing that has happened to this institution in a very long time, my friend. Edwardson would be crazy to suspend you over an issue that only the staff knows about. There were no casualties involved and Minerva managed to revert the damage you caused to that table with a swift flick of her wand. No. The board isn't concerned with the erratic nature of your magic at this point, Severus. That was me talking as a concerned friend of yours. Why didn't you tell me anything about it? What's more... Why haven't you told Potter?"

His lips thinned into a line of mulish reticence. He disliked being asked about his motivations to do anything. There were things that he had to own up to, but... the sluggish return of his weakened magic was a subject that shamed him very deeply. He felt useless and exposed, whenever his attempts at casting perfectly regular and even low-level spells encountered difficulties, and had become quite adept at avoiding the awkward need for having to perform magic in front of anyone.

The episode with the table had been born of tired overconfidence and idiotic, hope-filled stupidity on his part. He'd felt utterly humiliated at the time, having to endure the horror of withstanding everyone's pitiful looks and helpful rushing to fix the mess he had created. He'd walked out of the Hall and holed in his lab for the rest of that night, trying to prepare himself mentally for the ordeal of having to call Max and tell him that he... he was a dangerous liability to the school.

Against his every expectation the head of the school governors had told him not to worry about that and outright refused to accept his letter of resignation. Now Luc wanted him to rake over that whole episode and he just... lacked the kind of energy necessary to look at his oldest friend in the eye and lie to him.

"I'm as good as a squib, Luc. The castle tries to boost my weakened spell-work, but the truth is that I... I'm unable to perform magic safely. I didn't want you to know, and I definitely don't want to worry Harry any more than he already is. This is something that affects me more directly than it affects either of you and I... I need to accept this limitation before I'm ready to cope with either of you trying to help. There's nothing left to recover, don't you see?. You both are always so certain that I'll wake up, one day, to find my magic restored that it makes it that much harder to speak about this with the two of you..."

Silence settled between them with the same wretched finality of a tombstone being lowered into place. Luc's aristocratic visage had lost all color. He'd turned rigid with outraged disagreement and it was clear to see that he was a single breath away from actually exploding into a tiresome spiel of ranted reassurances that Severus had no intention of bothering to listen.

"Don't!. Just... don't, Luc. Please... I'd be grateful if you leave it at that for the moment. There's nothing else for it, you must believe me"

The explosive sigh that rent the air made him flinch visibly in his chair and he turned his dark eyes towards the windows. There were moments when he wished the other man didn't know him as well as he did. There were times when he wished Draco wasn't here, witnessing his every failure, worrying about him incessantly and tipping his father off about his wellbeing, whenever the boy felt there was cause for the kind of intervention that couldn't be reasonably performed through a simple fire-call.

"Draco said you lifted the table without effort. You cast the feather-weight and levitation spells flawlessly, Severus. It was when Mctavish tried to butt in, that his unwanted interference distracted you from your casting. You thought the table was going to hit him, didn't you?. My son believes that you panicked because you are too wary of your magical ability to trust in it completely. You freaked out when that idiot got in your way and your instinctive reaction to protect him ended up with you blowing the whole table away with the overly powerful application of a defensive shield. That doesn't sound like the accidental burst of a depleting magical core, Severus. It sounds like sheer anxiety having gotten the best out of you, if I'm perfectly honest."

"Draco and you, both, are trying to see what isn't there!. The table lifted up waveringly. It tilted to one side due to a weakness in my spell-work. Mctavish tried to help, but it was too late for him to do anything, I don't see the point of arguing about this any further!"

"I've been looking at Draco's memories of that accident and I'm pretty sure that you had your spell under control until that ridiculous excuse for a muggle studies teacher decided to intervene"

He was shocked right out of his ashamed indignation by that outrageous claim.

"Are you actually accusing a member of my staff of... what, exactly, Luc? What possible reason could Gregory Mctavish have to sabotage me?"

Elegant wide shoulders rose and fell in a delicately executed little shrug that pretty much dismissed the absent professor entirely.

"I'm not accusing that poor, infatuated, child of anything. He's done nothing to concern either of us, unless we are actually talking about the fact that his besotted hero-worship is driving Potter crazy"

His thoughts froze and his eyes widened with his very next heartbeat. He stared, with horrified disbelief, straight into Luc's laughing gray eyes and felt his every muscle turn to stone.

"Mctavish has a crush on Harry?" The words left a bitter taste on the surface of his tongue. They scorched him as he spoke them and his mind whirled with perfectly sickened worry. A sudden flash of the muggle studies professor's charmingly dimpled visage flashed across the surface of his mind and his stomach dropped to his toes with wretched sorrow. He'd been waiting for this to happen, to be perfectly honest. He'd already started to lose sleep over the many ways in which he could lose Harry's affection and this particular scenario was always at the very top of his list.

As the days had turned into weeks, without a single sign of the auror's focused interest in him losing a smidgen of strength, his heart had began to fill with the kind of hope that he knew would eventually harm him the most. His mind told him to be cautious but his newfound trust in crazy gryffindors urged him to believe in what he logically knew to be... ultimately impossible.

He'd learned to relish every single hint that reassured him of the fact that he hadn't managed to lose Harry's flattering interest in him yet. Despite all of that, he'd also began to fear the day when the boy finally canceled one of their encounters in order to accommodate the demands of a newer, and far more promising, friendship.

This perfectly reasonable worry circled his mind constantly and it had led him to a truly soul-destroying self-assessment on the quality of his own inexistent charms. That, in turn, ended up with him starting to lose even more sleep over the baffling idea that Harry must be able to see something of value in him. It was obvious that the boy certainly found him to be less than utterly repulsive, no matter how ridiculous he himself found that idea, and therefore there must be some sort of asset that he was in possession of, but others lacked...

For a while now he had pondered the thought to the exclusion of almost everything else. He had tried to analyze his own behavior, his ghastly looks, every single fact that the boy certainly knew about both, himself and the unfortunate circumstances of his life, in tireless search for that elusive something that he possessed but apparently Petersen hadn't. He desperately wanted to know what the source of Harry's baffling attraction to him could possibly be, but he could not explain the unexplainable, no matter how hard he tried. Now he'd finally ran out of time by the sound of things. Competition had arrived on the scene in the shape of a member of his own staff and he hadn't even managed to see it coming...

He felt so sickened by the very idea that his throat constricted to the point where taking his next breath became a challenge. He could feel his face turn ashen and was trying his best to hide the sudden tremor that was affecting his hands from Luc, by the very simple trick of curling his pale, long fingers into fists.

"Oh, for Salazar's sake, Severus!. How can you be this blind? Mactavish and Potter despise each other!. It's you that they are both lusting after and your close working relationship with that simpering buffoon is driving our great Saviour utterly mad.

He's mopping all over the place, irritating everyone with his constant forlorn sighing and whatnot. It's so ridiculous that I'd laugh, if I hadn't had to endure his soppy presence in my drawing room for the last three days in a row, because he has irritatingly decided that he needs to know if you like men who have dimples or not and I'm, apparently, the bloody expert on the matter!.

I told him to grow some nuts and tell you that he wants someone else in the room, whenever Mctavish is here, but he doesn't want to bring this issue to your attention, because he quite rightly guessed that you'd actually missed the whole point of the professor's puppy-dog looks.

It's amazing to see... That bloody auror actually knows you like the palm of his hand, doesn't he?"

He felt suddenly lightheaded. Like a man's whose past, whose future, had just cleared from under the heavy weight of the most terrible burden. He felt strangely disassociated too. Almost as if he couldn't believe that he wasn't dreaming. Or imagining this whole crazy scenario in a bout of paranoid madness.

"Mctavish has a crush on... me?" He was so appalled by the very concept that he uttered that question with a strangely timid squeak. Luc snorted, shook his dazzling blond head with obvious despair, and proceeded to tsk-tsk at him with truly infuriating superiority.

"OH!, Severus, Severus... my dear, dear, friend... you are a very bright man when it comes to all things sneaky and potions-related. You are a fountain of sheer genius when we talk about magical theory and even transfiguration. You are a paragon of excellence in the rarefied world of wizarding academia, but... you are the most ridiculous idiot when it comes to spotting a man who is, literally, gagging to be left alone with you in this very office for the rest of eternity!.

Why do you think Mctavish played the card of the poor, clueless, professor who is in desperate need of some quality guidance from his tall and aloof mentor?. He's been touching your elbow, your wrist, your bloody shoulder... with revolting regularity for the last two months, Severus!. Every time we all met to discuss your Internet project he found reasons to stay behind and even tried to secure a couple of private meetings with you, alleging that he was more involved with the study plan than Granger and me were...

Didn't you notice that woman's acidic digs to his every request to have a private word with you? Didn't you notice how she always took the seat directly beside you and forced me to take the other one? Didn't you see how she'd spill her tea, or drop her quill, going as far as to point out imaginary creepy crawlies in an obvious attempt at getting Mctavish to stop touching you, every single time that he so much as set his paws on you?"

He stared at Luc with wide-eyed incredulity.

"I assumed Hermione didn't like him for some reason. I knew that Harry had some sort of problem with him, but it never crossed my mind that it might be... jealousy.

How can this possibly be true? Have any of you actually bothered to look me in the face lately?. It's hard enough to believe that I might have managed to snare Harry's attention, but to go as far as insinuating that Mactavish has developed that kind of interest in me is... it's crazy, Luc!. Just... crazy!. They are both so..."

"Attractive? Good looking? Clever?... Yes, they are. They are both perfectly healthy hunks that many a gay man would quite gladly sell his mother to sink their greedy teeth into. And they both want you. Shocking... isn't it, Severus?.

I bet Evans is turning cartwheels in her grave right about now. Your father too. And that bastard, Klinius, with his whole idiotic band of hufflepuff groupies... Now he is a happily forgotten Quidditch has-been while you are... well, you are you. I bet he'd turn back in time and stop his pals from breaking your every bone, in retaliation for you having a crush on him, if someone only gave him a time-turner powerful enough to bring him back to our fourth year..."

He was ruffled by the obvious scorn dripping from the perfectly shaped lips of his lifelong friend.

"Do not mock me, Luc!"

Those words seemed to incense his companion beyond reason. They brought forth an unholy fire to that sharp, smoke-colored gaze that raked him from head to toes with a sort of infuriated rage.

"I'm honestly fed up with this nonsense about your looks, Severus. There's absolutely nothing wrong with them!"

He felt wronged and irrationally attacked. His chest eased forwards and his dark eyes shone like coals.

"Are you crazy? Look at me. LOOK AT ME, LUC!. I'm too thin, too tall, too pale!. My nose is too large and twisted to the left, from when that bastard, Potter, broke it in my third year. My teeth are crooked and tea-stained. My hair has been a laughing stock for as long as I've lived and my temper is like a cross between an enraged veela's and a half-crazed banshee's. I know you love me, my friend, but that is no excuse to become blind to my every fault. I am an absolutely non-starter, when it comes to either grace or beauty, and it's hard for me to imagine how it's possible for these two... youths... to be so blind as to consider me charming in any shape or form!"

The anger drained from Luc's shoulders as if it never had been and a hurtful look of pity took it's place.

"You are the one who is blind. So blind... You don't see all the things that make you, maybe not beautiful, no, but striking enough to be perfectly appealing to a certain type of person.

Yes, you are tall and thin... so what? Your body has the gracefulness of a dancer. You move gently, like a cat, and you do it in such way that it's impossible not to marvel at your elegance. Your skin is pale, that's true. But it's also almost luminescent and soft. It's only tainted at your fingertips and even that draws the eye to those long, artistic, hands of yours. Your hair could take some care, I agree, but it has a beautiful color. It's soft and it's length suits you, no matter what anyone else says. There's nothing wrong with it. Your eyes are beautiful, too. They are deep and dark, like those bottomless wishing wells from the old stories and your voice... your voice alone could enthrall the old Fae, Severus.

You've spent so long being surrounded by superficial idiots, who wouldn't be able to find true worth even it it smacked them on the face, that you've actually allowed yourself to believe their ridiculous claims. Anyone who'd throw away your affection, in order to get embroiled with a Lockhart lookalike, doesn't actually deserve you, anyway!"

He'd just opened his mouth to utter a most scathing retort when a sudden, sharply delivered, burst of wild clapping halted his effort. They both turned towards the fireplace to discover Harry's face in the middle of the green-tinted flames.

"I must say I wouldn't have managed to put all of that quite as well as you did, Malfoy" The little menace dared to say into the thick silence that followed, wrenching a loud and irritatingly satisfied bark of laughter from his friend's throat.

"How long have you been there, Harry?" Severus questioned warily and the look the child directed at him told him the answer before the boy himself did.

"Long enough to have learned that you've been hiding things from me on purpose, Severus"

"Why don't you join us, Mr. Potter? I find myself in need to ask a few questions about that particular issue and Severus here has decided to behave in a distressingly uncooperative way, I'm afraid"

A single beat of silence followed. The fire crackled as the head within it turned, once again, to stare straight at him.

"May I come in, Severus? I'm already here and I already know that you are having trouble with your magic. I did try to call your attention once or twice but you guys were so caught up in your discussion that you missed my every attempt at interrupting you"

There was something so satisfied, fleeting about Luc's clear colored gaze in that one second, that Severus became convinced that the blond had cast a notice-me-not spell over the fireplace. What he couldn't actually figure out was why the castle had allowed him that liberty...

His brow furrowed with annoyed exasperation and his hand rose to pinch the bridge of his nose in frustration. It had been years since the last time Luc had so blatantly played with his life.

"Fine!... Come in, then. I'm sure having you here has been part of the plan all along, whatever that plan might be... am I right Lucius?"

Luc had the grace to look chastised. He flinched visibly at both: Severus' harsh tone and his unusual choice to call him by that rarely used full name.

Harry's footsteps seemed to thunder around his whirling senses as the auror entered the room and he could perceive a sort of sadness clinging to the boy's every motion that revealed a great deal of disappointment. His mind blanked with the ashamed realization that, by hiding this latest debacle from him, he had failed Harry greatly. The gryffindor reached his side and a hand curled around his rigid shoulder in what he understood to be a generous attempt at trying to get his attention without upsetting him further.

"Severus?"

His name, spoken in that softly questioning tone, forced him to look sideways and upwards, straight into a twin set of shadowed emerald pools that were flashing with concern.

"Are you sure that you want to do this right now? You are looking really upset and I don't want to stress you any more than you already are..."

Those caring words brought back his courage. He blinked slowly and his face turned pale with pained dismay at the prospect of enduring the conversation that would no doubt ensue from here. His hand rose to grasp the boy's own digits with a sudden, irrational need to anchor himself to this one second in time. He crushed poor Harry's hand in a hold that must have been excruciatingly painful, earning himself not a word in offended denial of the comfort that he was voicelessly seeking, but a smile of reassurance and a gentle squeeze back.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you, Harry. I honestly believe that there's nothing to say here past the disheartening admission that I... I have lost my magic."

A thickly cushioned chair sailed across the room at the command of Luc's wand, settling right behind Harry in the next second.

"Don't you listen to this ridiculous drama king, Potter. He's so busy feeling sorry for himself that he can't see the wood for the trees, no matter how many times I helpfully point him in the right direction"

"And what would the right direction be, Mr. Malfoy? Hermione is of the opinion that I botched the essence of the oath, somehow. We've gone through my memories of it, time and time again, but the wording isn't ambiguous enough to have been twisted into a command to block Severus' magic. Furthermore... it's obvious that his magic isn't blocked. He has been using it lately, with varying degrees of success, and that alone points to the fact that it's both there and perfectly intact. We haven't been able to figure out what on Earth is going on and it's driving me up the wall!"

Luc's eyes shone with enthusiastic relish and his hands joined together at the fingertips in a gesture that he used whenever he had the upper hand.

"I believe your friend has the right idea, but is mistaken about what happened to the magic. I've found something else. Something that could possibly fit this scenario to the letter, if only I can ascertain a few things...

I need to make sure that I understand all aspects of what happened, but I don't really want to go over that tiresome avowal any longer. I want to move us beyond it. Back to the moment when you first decided to back out of your agreement, Severus.

Why, exactly, did you suddenly decide to fight off the vow? What did it do that alarmed you enough to ignore every dire warning drilled into your skull against committing such a foolish act?"

The question forced him to remember that one second when his despairing mind had first encountered the inexplicably loving nature of Harry's powerful magic. He'd been expecting pain and poisoned bitterness to come from a connexion that he'd believed had been forged in revenge. He'd been filled to the brim with warmth instead. Held in what he now recognized as a simple and straightforward manifestation of Harry's genuine affection for him and he'd panicked with the idea that the vow had been corrupted. Only... It hadn't been miscast at all, had it?.

Knowing what he now knew he could finally understand that Harry's intention had been to bring them closer all along. The boy had wanted to force him into a situation were he had to accept the help that the auror was so willing to give him. The vow had been a ploy to gain unchallenged access to him. Harry had wanted to have the freedom to protect him, care for him, shelter and look after him, bring him to safety... He'd demanded both obedience and secrecy, yes. But he'd done so in order to avoid others revealing the true nature of his own emotions towards Severus. He'd requested respect, companionship and the stipulation that there'd be open communication between them... None of that was harmful. None of it was bitter, angry, or dangerous in the slightest. Every single demand that the gryffindor had voiced had the same simple desire to... protect him... at it's core.

Of course the magic of the vow had been loving!. Of course it had enfolded him like a bond born of affection. It had always been a bond meant to grant him sanctuary and he fought it, tooth and nail, causing himself harm...

"I believed the magic had been corrupted at the time. I was expecting... pain... and when that didn't come I panicked. Harry's magic couldn't mask his benevolent intentions and I assumed... I assumed that it was twisting itself. I tried to break it off before it formed into something that he hadn't intended to create. I... I thought we were going to end up being trapped by the unwanted requirements of a link that had been cast in error."

Luc's gray gaze sharpened with something very close to unholy satisfaction.

"But the spell wasn't warped, Severus. It had been cast in love, with the intention to protect you. It had been accepted by you, no matter how much trickery was involved in accomplishing that particular feat" Luc's words halted there long enough to allow him to shoot a truly frightening look towards Harry's flushed face. His gray eyes were hard, like swords, and his face had turned into the rigid mask that so easily displayed the very worst of his alluringly dark nature.

"You are a lucky man indeed, Potter. You messed with the very lives of both: my oldest friend and the child the gods have given me. I would have hunted you down, to the very doors of Hell itself, if something untoward had happened to either of them. I might still have to do that, do you understand? Severus, here, might be willing to forgive you, if you happen to be stupid enough to try hurting him now, but I'm afraid that my nature is that of a darker, more sinister breed. I am a Malfoy, after all. And Malfoys do not like it when other's go around breaking our... toys."

"Luc!" His enraged remonstration didn't even seem to register with the other two. Harry's hand had now descended along the length of his own arm, curling around his wrist in order to hold his hand, almost in challenge. He had the actual boldness to interlock their fingers firmly, in a show meant to advertise obvious unity to their companion. Luc's eyes narrowed and his brows came together in a slight frown before his lips curved in a small, pleased smirk.

"And I dislike on principle anyone who considers Severus to be their toy, Malfoy. I also happen to have a very worrying tendency to lose my temper whenever I get upset. I'm mostly certain that you won't enjoy to be the cause of one of my infamous episodes..."

Severus' incredulous face turned sharply towards Harry. He could not actually believe that this was happening to him!. His breath froze and his eyes darkened with an absolutely appalled sense of... anger and he rose suddenly off his chair, dislodging his hand away from the auror's own, and walked crossly towards one of the tall windows in order to stare outside through peeved dark eyes.

"If you two don't stop playing these stupid games, right this second, I'm going to throw the both of you out of my office!. Am I making myself clear?" His incensed growl thundered around the office and he turned to glare at his companions with pure disgust.

Luc turned around in his chair and had the actual gall to wink infuriatingly at him with a delighted sort of inexplicable enthusiasm.

"Don't be like that Severus!. I needed to make this point when I had the chance. Who else is going to step in and murder Potter, if he messes you up, eh? Threatening me with office eviction, when I'm in the middle of delivering my menacing best-friend spiel for your benefit isn't very gracious of you. Don't worry too much about it, though. I'm feeling gracious enough to forgive you. I've been waiting to threaten a suitor of yours for so long that I feel as if I've just won the Quidditch World Cup all by myself!"

Harry broke into hysterical giggles at that moment and the whole ridiculous situation descended into utter chaos. Luc laughed too, and they both ignored his displeased and rigid figure by the window in order to enjoy their mirth in incomprehensible complicity. He stood stiffly apart, staring at them with appalled irritation. They were behaving like little children. He honestly had no idea about why on Earth he bothered with these two...

"Feel free to return to your senses at some point today, gentlemen. You may not have much to do, beyond driving me to distraction, but I must remind you that my time happens to be precious."

A second later he heard Harry's soft sigh but he ignored that entirely and turned his enraged eyes towards the window once again. There was a snow battle being waged on the West field, in what appeared to be fourth versus fifth years, and he made a mental note to request some sort of soup to be served for dinner...

"So... we all agree that the intent of my magic was loving when I cast the oath. Don't we, Severus?"

Harry's question brought him out of his distracted thoughts and he brought his palm right out, placed it flat against the freezing-cold glass in front of him, and took a single deep breath.

"Your magic has always been loving when it comes to me, Harry. It shouldn't have been able to harm me, not even after I tried to resist it, because it was born to protect me. That's what every expert in magical theory will tell you: the intention of the wizard controls the magic... That's what makes the fact that I ended up being not only hurt, but also punished with a magical drain, so difficult to believe. Something happened to me. Something twisted that magic in such a way that the very nature of it was utterly corrupted, I can't think of any other explanation that makes sense..."

"You are forgetting the one thing that tilted everything out of control, Severus. There's something we all have mentioned, at one time or another, but everyone has ignored so far: You are Hogwarts' chosen headmaster, my friend, and you happened to be on school grounds when you agreed to swear that vow. Now there are two points that are extremely important here: the first one is that you were physically unable to cope with any sort of magical backlash at the time, due to your health. The second is that, when you started to fight off that oath, the castle immediately saw the vow's magic as a direct, magical attack against your person.

It was only after you mentioned that your ability to perform magic started to improve after your return to the castle, that I finally remembered how the school's own magic has always been rumored to become directly linked to the magic of it's headmasters. That's when I decided to go back to the history of the school. I attempted to study every account that I could find relating to the presence of a physically unfit headmaster on the grounds..."

Harry became suddenly interested. His upper body leaned slightly forwards, elbows propped on his knees and green eyes narrowed in what Severus assumed was his most intimidating Head Auror expression.

"Attempted?. What do you mean by that, Malfoy?. Surely you must have found dozens of entries. Dumbledore himself lived well past a hundred and fifty and I have it on good authority that some of Hogwarts' former headmasters have been veritable mummies by the time they've met their maker!"

Luc smiled with the kind of satisfaction that only a cat that has feasted on the fattest of all mice has any right to show.

"They were old, yes. But they weren't unfit. Severus is the first of Hogwarts' headmasters to have been harmed, during the actual course of his tenure, in a way that wasn't specifically prearranged in advance."

Luc turned around then and the pale gray eyes that had seen him at his worst, but also had accompanied him during some of the happiest moments of his life, clashed with his own. There was something really strange within that look. Something somber. Something awed. Something that spoke of the fact that, whatever Luc had found out about the situation, it was unusual enough to have rattled him profoundly.

"What is it, Luc? What do you think happened to me?" He asked the question directly, with the kind of boldness that had been born not out of courage, no, but out of terror. Out of the crystal-clear understanding that his friend... his friend had finally found the answer to this riddle and that answer was, somehow, not as straightforward as Luc might have desired it to be...

"It's unclear to me why the school failed to protect you from Nagini's bite, Severus. You were Hogwarts' headmaster already by then and, since you were on school grounds when you were attacked, that snake should have never managed to come anywhere near you, according to my research...

I can only assume that it was your own desire to act as a bait, in those particular circumstances, that stayed the castle's own intrinsic reactions, thus it failed to protect you in a bid to allow the course of action that you had already agreed to follow beforehand to develop unchallenged. I believe Hogwarts' was counting on Dumbledore's plans for both, your own future and the outcome of the final battle, to actually deliver the greater good they promised.

The castle allowed you to come to harm and then kept you alive long enough for Draco to reach your side in time to save you. It also kept you tethered to itself, throughout your coma, no matter how far away you wandered from your own consciousness. It held onto you with something very close to guilt, I think, until you recovered completely and then it tried to overprotect you when it believed you to have encountered danger once again.

It is my belief that Hogwarts was trying to defend you from the backlash of the oath, while the vow itself was equality intent on protecting you from the power of the castle's intervention...

Then your panic escalated and you assumed that the magic was being corrupted even further and, deciding to throw caution to the wind, started to fight them both, instead of surrendering yourself to the magic. There was no chance for you then, Severus. Your weakened body couldn't cope with the stress of it all, even though the magical backlash was actually benevolent.

This is something Potter himself told me. It was confirmed by the healers at the time: you were drained due to an over-exposure to raw power, but you were never directly attacked by it. Not in any way. Your body was forced to shut all magical conduits down, because keeping them open would have killed you, but that was never the desired result that the magic had been seeking in the first place"

"So I've been turned off, like the faucet of a sink... It's what I've been trying to tell you. No matter how unintentionally it was actually accomplished the end result is still the same, Luc. My magic has been erased and now there's nothing left"

His own voice sounded worn out and distant to his ears. He felt cold down to his core. Adrift. Abandoned. His dark eyes obscured even further and he couldn't have looked directly at either of his companions at that moment for all the gold in Gringotts.

"No. Severus. That's what could have happened. What was happening, right until the point when you started convulsing in reaction to the magical overload. That's when Potter here decided to intervene. He tried to still the outpouring of power. I'm pretty sure he attempted to settle the oath, so that it'd be out of the way, didn't you Potter?"

Widened green eyes closed in what looked like pained distress and the boy's Adam apple bobbed up and down on his tense throat when he swallowed hard. Then his eyelids shot open and he stared straight into Severus' own eyes with ashen-faced recollection.

"I'd already caused you to go into a respiratory arrest a few days earlier. It was my very worst nightmare turned reality. I tried to stop it, but I couldn't!. Nothing was working. Nothing!. Your arm had broken and you fainted from the pain, then you started to shake in the throes of a magical storm... I could see the castle's power trying to wrestle with the oath's. I tried to dissolve the vow, but I couldn't do anything!. I... I started to scream. I can't even remember what I was shouting. I don't know what I did, or why it worked, Severus. I only know that it stopped."

"You spoke parseltongue, Potter. That's what you did. It's the only thing that fits. You spoke in the language of one of the castle's founders and the magic responded, not to your words, but to your intentions.

You invoked one of the oldest bonds known to wizardkind and it worked because the vow had been born from love. It worked because the castle was trying to protect it's headmaster. It worked because Severus himself had been trying to protect you in turn, when he decided to start fighting the oath.

You invoked Salazar's Shield, my friend. And, when you did, you became Severus' magical guardian in the same way that a Patronus holds his caster's joy.

You are the key to Severus' power, Potter, and he won't recover it successfully until you release his magical core back into his own control"

Shocked silence followed Luc's bizarre announcement and he blinked with astounded disbelief. His knees threatened to fail him and he flopped against the window, behind him, trying to get the cold glass to ground him into reality.

"Salazar's Shield is a myth, Luc. Even if it could be casted, you'd need to be bloody Merlin to make it work..."

Elegant wide shoulders shrugged with the utter certainty of those who know they are correct, despite all indications to the contrary.

"Everyone's failure to recast the shield successfully is related to the fact that it must be invoked in parseltongue. The purity of the emotions necessary to power the spell-work have also helped turn it's recasting into a virtual impossibility, as it's very hard indeed to find not one, but two, participants who both share the same desire to... selflessly protect one another. I've found not a single indication to assume that this spell requires it's caster to be particularly strong in magical power, Severus. And while we are actually discussing the very interesting point of myth versus true historical data, allow me to remind you that The Deathly Hallows were also a myth, my friend, and yet they came out of their story book to help the Savior here kill the Dark Lord"

"Salazar's Shield? What in the bloody Hell is that? What's more... If you know what's wrong with Severus, and you know the way to fix it, then why aren't you guys jumping for joy and telling me the right charm to sort this out?"

Harry's puzzled barrage of questions forced the two slytherins to turn around and look at him with something akin to dazed wonder. They had grown up knowing every single legend there was to know about the founder of their House and they couldn't understand the fact that others hadn't.

"Salazar's Shield is a powerful spell that's rumored to have saved the lives of the Four Founders. There's a story about them having loved each other with a perfect, selfless love. The emotion was so pure in form, so lacking in greed, that it has been hailed as the force that built this castle. The four were like brothers and sisters to each other, they would have gone beyond The Veil for one another. Rumor has it that Hogwarts is built on what once was the lair of a Nundu. The Founders came here, drawn by the strength of the area's magic, and were attacked by the beast to the point where only Slytherin remained standing. He could have ran away, saved himself. There was no way he could rescue his companions and survive...

It all came down to the one moment when he had enough strength to cast one last spell. His companions expected him to dissapparate, but when he opened his mouth he screamed out something in Parseltongue. In the next second he reportedly became some sort of magical, human shield that protected his companions and himself. The strength of the spell was such that nothing could actually cross it: nor magic nor creature, nor death itself.

It's been said that his wish to protect his friends, combined with their equal fervent desire to see him safe, produced the kind of force that has remained unrivaled throughout history and a double-layered shield, born from selfless love, was the result. No one has ever managed to reproduce that spell. No one!. No one could even write it down, as it was originally cast in parseltongue, but everyone agrees on the same point:

This school was built here, in a region that thrums with a wild, rich power. It did flourish and grow, protected by the kind of wards that no one has ever managed to either break nor reproduce. Hogwarts was powerful beyond measure until the very day Slytherin decided to walk away, and then it just... remained. It can't grow any further but it can't diminish, either.

Salazar's Shield binds the magic of everyone being protected under it together, in such a way that they become each other's protectors in cases of dire need. You are holding onto Severus' reserves of energy, because he was the weakened partner when the spell was first invoked but tomorrow that situation might reverse, Potter...

As far I can see the shield was cast independently of the oath. It links you both in loving protection of one another. It can not be dissolved nor changed. It can not be denied, either. You'll belong together magically until the very day you die."

Harry's eyebrows drew in obvious puzzlement.

"Magical belonging... that sounds kind of frightening, Malfoy. I though the magic was protective"

"It was. It is. You are linked in power only, in magic. You are linked in order to act as one another's defender. You can come to each other's aid, manipulate each other's levels of power to the best advantage of the weakest of the two. You can boost each other's magic whenever there's a real, mortal, threat against one of you.

This is a shield, Potter. A tool. It has the ability to keep you safe, yes, but only if you decide to use it. It can't force itself on you. You can ignore this particular aspect of your magic and nothing untoward would ever happen to either your health nor Severus'. But your power will stall. It'll never grow any further, it won't mature nor change. It'll remain just as it is forever, unless you embrace the shield completely. That's the reason why this castle can't expand beyond the limits it had already reached before the Founders split. Once Salazar rejected the others, the shield's power began to wane and their magic simply stalled. This link won't ever harm you, but once it's cast... it's binding, Potter. Severus' wand can't recognize him properly because your magic is obscuring his own essence. The growing closeness between you two, coupled with your constant presence around him and the slow recovery of his physical strength, has allowed some of his magic to become available to him. But you'll have to remove the shield completely, now that there's no actual danger threatening him, or his power will continue trying to submit itself to yours."

Harry exhaled then, a deep and relieved sound that seemed to echo off the thick walls loudly.

"So Severus isn't my magical slave or something... is he? He'll have no reason to hate my guts after I remove this shield thing. He'll be back to normal and he'll be perfectly safe... Is that what you are telling me, Malfoy?"

Luc's eyes shone like hardened diamonds, his lips thinned and he turned around slightly to stare silently at him once more and Severus understood that, no matter how bizarre it might all sound to his own disbelieving ears, his friend was perfectly convinced that he was right.

"Yes, Potter. He'll be safe and he'll be free. He'll be nothing of yours, unless you purposely enter another bond together. The presence of the shield between you two will boost any other ties you try to establish. A simple promise will become an oath. An actual oath will become unbreakable. A simple marriage will result in a Soul-Bond...

I'll just give you the information and allow you both to decide what you want to become to one another at your own pace. For now, though, all you have to do is walk up to Severus and take his wand. Press it together against your own and cast Finite Contego* in parseltongue. If I'm right, which I most certainly am, then Severus' magic should be unlocked."

Harry's green gaze searched his own. There was a soft light of hope filling the boy's eyes that managed to unfreeze his own paralyzed reactions. He eased away from the window and took a few steps closer, watching intently as the boy rose from his chair and began to approach him too. They came together a few steps away from Luc's own chair and, as he lifted his dark eyes, he found himself drowning into the beauty of Harry's verdant ones. He could hear nothing past the loud roar in his ears and he feared that he might faint in the next second with the terrified longing to believe that Luc might be correct.

When warm hands settled on his upper arms, in a gesture of comfort, his neck gave up and he dropped his aching forehead against Harry's strong shoulder. The moment hung, like a dew-drop from a leaf, spinning slowly around them. Holding them both together in a fragile web of hope. Bringing them both to a dazzled understanding of what they had, so unwittingly, become: they were each other's guardians. Each other's strength. They were each other's shelter...

Harry's hand touched his own, eventually. The boy held his trembling digits, guided them towards his own wand-holder and closed them around the handle of his wand. Then the auror dragged that very same loosely curled fist across the wide expanse of his young chest, sliding their entwined hands carefully towards his standard issued auror-wand-holder and they both drew that wand out together, too.

Their eyes held and their breath mingled when their wands began to thrum with that familiar, warm power that he'd always found comforting. Magic swirled around their sticks, passing from one into the other as if they both shared the same thread. One single core. Severus finally understood that this wasn't only Harry's magic, not any more... Their wands were actually responding to that unique union of powerfully affectionate energy that they had created together on that day. It was a magic that they had already used in perfect synchrony before now, a magic that had always made him feel complete. At home. Utterly safe...

"Shheesjia Shusshue Liashhiass"

He could not understand the words his companion uttered, but he felt their effect immediately. His wand jolted within his hold, alive and welcoming in the truest sense for the very first time since he'd fought that blasted vow. His eyes widened when he felt his palm tingle with the familiar pinprick of his own energy and he took a single step back. They drew apart from one another. His gaze dropping down, in wonder, to stare towards his wand-hand.

He was trembling so hard that his arm wavered visibly as he lifted it slowly and pointed it straight in front of himself. He could feel every single fiber of that beloved length of Birch respond to his every movement and he felt a wild sort of perfectly pure elation rise within him. He was back!... He was in possession of that thing that he'd always valued above all else once more. He was a wizard, once again!. He was back to being special. Back to being more than his father had ever been, back to being his mother's son, back to himself. He was back to having undisputed control of his own destiny...

"Expecto Patronum!" He invoked the hardest charm of them all with the kind of certainty that could only have brought him triumph and his eyes shone like a starless expanse of midnight when she thundered from his wand and across his office, like the very ghost of joy. Lily... His Lily... The very embodiment of all that he had loved and lost in life was here, in this very office, beside him once again. She was perfect. She was beautiful. She was his... But she wasn't everything he wanted anymore...

His gaze rose then to clash with Harry's green one and he felt freer in that one second than he'd felt in a long time.

"I loved her, Harry. I loved her so much... and she will always embody my happiness in this small way. But she... she deserves to be freed from the emotions that have kept her tethered to me for two long decades. She deserves release... She deserves to have the love I once professed her wane and change to suit the passing of time. She deserves to dwell only in my past. To have no place in my present, or my future. She deserves to be finally relegated into a box holding fond memories and I... I deserve to give myself the chance to finally, genuinely, forget her..."

TBC...

A/N: Cambok* was a medieval sport, apparently very similar to Lacrosse.

Finite Contego* roughly translates as to remove all protections.


	37. Chapter 37

**THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 37.**

Having his magic back filled him with renewed joy. He felt calmer and more certain. He felt safer and complete. He felt like a better, healthier version of himself. He felt like he'd never felt before in the entirety of his life and it showed in the way he spoke and thought. In the way he behaved.

As the month of January dragged itself along in a whirling of activity and cold weather he learned that he actually loved being Hogwarts' headmaster. The job was interesting and demanding, his teachers were a bright and dedicated bunch and he'd finally managed to get out of trying to teach the little brats a beautiful art that they were only ever interested in destroying. He missed his Lab work though. Missed it with the kind of passion that drove him down to the dungeons in the evenings, in order to indulge his craving for the art by brewing this or that potion for the infirmary.

After Luc had so brutally opened his eyes to the reasons behind professor Mctavish's peculiar behaviour towards him he became aware of the fact that there were those who conducted themselves in exactly that same manner towards Harry. This led him to the startling understanding of the fact that the boy could have already abandoned him, if that had been his desire. Harry was being literally hounded by attractive and bold _hopefuls_ wherever he went.

Their outings together were now peppered with his irritated glaring at this or that wide-eyed challenger behind his companion's back and his formerly unshakable determination to keep their increasingly closer relationship out of the public eye started to waver, as his fears of finding himself abandoned in the very near future, for a friendlier and far more attractive paramour, rose exponentially to his newer and utterly unwelcome awareness of just how... sought after... Harry really was.

Just as January was about to end Harry broached the subject of returning to his own set of chambers within Hogwarts. He appeared to be truly nervous as he spoke, almost like a supplicant awaiting a king's approval and Severus frowned in concerned incomprehension. He could not understand why the auror would bother to ask him his opinion on the matter. As far as he'd understood those rooms belonged to the man, they had been granted In Omnem _Vitam* _to him by the ministry itself. He could not actually see _why_ the boy felt the need to ask for his permission to return to what, in essence, was his own home...

"I've been bunking in Ron's and Hermione's guest-room all this time, Severus. I couldn't bear to stay at the flat once you left. Everything reminded me of you. It felt like torture...

I know I could have come here straight away, but... I had pushed you so hard... You were on the very brink of sending our friendship straight to Hell and I didn't want to risk alienating you even further, so... I've been waiting for the right moment to get back here."

He was shocked to hear this. He'd assumed that the auror had remained in his flat, never once bothering to ask him _why_ it was that his rooms here at Hogwarts felt more lived-in than that blasted place in muggle London. He hadn't felt the need to touch the subject, as he had no inclination to set foot in that soulless place ever again, but now he frowned with worried self-condemnation and wondered how it was possible that he hadn't even once bothered to ponder on the... strange _emptiness_ of that place, when compared to Harry's rooms here. Luc had told him that the boy had lived at Hogwarts, yet his mind seemed to have promptly forgotten all about that and had never truly attempted to remind him of it. What kind of friend did that make him? What kind of... _companion?_ How could he have _missed_ something so obvious for months?...

He felt so vexed with himself that his lips tightened with displeasure and he could not ignore the fierce burning of ashamed guilt that was twisting his guts into tightly coiled knots.

"I didn't know, Harry. I swear I didn't... Although I was already aware that you'd been living here before I recovered, the possibility that you might have abandoned your flat never even crossed my mind. I... I am sorry I never asked. Sorry I've been so blind to what should have been quite clear all along..."

The boy's messy dark head turned slightly to one side and those eyes that could see straight into the very depths of him studied him soberly.

"There's no reason for you to be sorry, Severus. You've had plenty of other things on your mind lately. Coming back here must have felt so strange to you... You were on the verge of a nervous breakdown at the time and I freely admit that it was my fault. I wanted to give you some of the space that you so desperately needed..."

"That was... extremely thoughtful of you. I can't honestly say I'd have reacted favourably if you had moved in straight away. Not right then. I was... I really needed some distance at the time..."

Harry's bright green eyes focused on his own with that disconcerting intensity that always made him squirm with sheer discomfort.

"I know that, Severus. I'm even willing to carry on like this, if you tell me that it's too soon for me to come home, but... I'd rather come back, unless you object strongly. Living with a young couple immersed in the busy business of raising a tiny baby is not the most restful of experiences, you know?."

He blinked, surprised anew by the fact that he was being asked his opinion on the matter. He was taken aback by the uneasy suspicion that they were actually dealing with this issue like a... _couple_.

_This_ was how Luc and Cissy interacted on every level, he'd seen it plenty of times. Had poked fun at his friend's expense for years on the issue of the man's inability to decide _anything, _without having first to engage in _wifely_ negotiations...

He was shocked by the fact that this didn't feel as restrictive as he'd always imagined it would. It didn't feel like a surrendering of his freedom or even like a concession at all, no. This felt kind of... comfortable. It felt surprisingly _liberating._ It gave him the idea that he _belonged _somewhere. To someone, for the first time in his life...

His wondering silence seemed to spook Harry. Those green eyes darkened ever so slightly and the boy fidgeted in his chair.

"I understand that this has the potential to make you really uncomfortable, Severus. I'll be here all the time, day and night, unless I'm working. There'll be no obvious respite for you, at least not in the same way as now. I'll be constantly around and there's a chance that you might find it quite... stifling.

I don't want to put pressure on you or anything, but... I've been thinking that we've been doing well together. You've looked happy enough these past few weeks... I haven't managed to send you running for the hills in a while, so... I honestly think that you could cope with this."

His cheeks turned rosy with ashamed embarrassment at that oblique reference to his tendency of avoiding engaging in any kind of discussion that even _brushed_ past the subject of private emotions.

"I work here, Harry. Do not forget that this is a school. There are hundreds of impressionable children living under this roof, who deserve better than to see anything... untoward... happening between their Headmaster and a respected member of the community."

Steady green eyes searched his flustered visage in the silence that followed. He stiffened into defensive formality and his hand shot out, towards the table, and grabbed the handle of his tea-cup with a slightly trembling hand. He used the delicate container like a shield, bringing it up in front of his own face and forcing himself to take a lengthy sip from the lukewarm beverage.

"Are you ashamed of... _us,_ Severus?"

The question was voiced with the kind of quiet, perfectly controlled neutrality that didn't come naturally to Harry. That alone would have alerted him to the fact that the auror was deathly serious, had he been criminally blind to the plain distress that was steadily turning that moss-coloured gaze into the very image of shattered disillusion.

Impotent frustration rose within his mind at his own inability to abandon the constraining chains that had always ruled his public behaviour. He knew that Harry could not understand his apparent reticence to acknowledge their relationship openly. He knew that his lack of warmth in public bothered the gryffindor. He'd accepted going out to dine in the auror's company, but was still refusing every single invitation to join the Weasley's Sunday lunches. He'd refused to intrude in the boy's weekly visits to Ron and Hermione, or to join him and his auror colleagues whenever they went out for a pint on Friday nights.

"I do not enjoy activities that revolve around the consumption of increasingly larger amounts of alcohol, Harry."

This excuse, used with increasing regularity nowadays, had gained him some respite a few times, but he was painfully aware that it couldn't be possibly applied to family gatherings at the Weasley's or afternoon visits to Ron and Hermione's home. It couldn't be applied to the annual fund-raiser for the auror corps that he'd been invited to attend as Harry's companion, either... He could definitely see where this awful question had come from, and it saddened him to understand that, in his pursuit to preserve their privacy, he'd been giving the gryffindor reason to believe that he wasn't fully committed to their budding relationship.

"I am not the kind of man who'd allow himself to... become intimate... with another unless there is some sort of strong commitment on my part, Harry. I'm sorry if my apparent reluctance to engage in public displays of... affection... has given you the erroneous idea that I regret our association."

Harry's rigidity didn't ease. His frown deepened even further and his eyes shone with the kind of concerned worry that could so easily bring Severus into an anxious state of agitated self-doubt.

"This isn't about your lack of warmth in public, Severus. No matter what you may think to the contrary I do know you well enough to understand that going _that_ _far_ is well beyond your comfort level, you know?.

We are growing closer every day, that is true, but we haven't gone past... hand-holding and gentle kissing, either. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy enough with that, but... you are the one who is talking about the intimacy we share as if that should reassure me.

I've been more intimate than this with perfect strangers, you know?. The plain and simple truth is that you are refusing to move forwards, for some reason. You are refusing to continue on, towards all those things that will cement a real commitment between us, and I don't really know if you are doing it out of actual lack of interest, or shame, or some sort of combination of the two.

I want you to understand that I'm not actually talking about sex here, Severus. I'm talking about your very obvious reluctance to come right out and _confirm_ that we are actual partners. We've been kissing for over two months already and still you are shying away from coming out to visit the people I consider family. You only allow us to come closer behind locked doors... You are _refusing_ to attend the fund-raiser as my significant other and that is going to force me to either go alone, or find someone willing to play the part of friendly sidekick for the evening.

I want you to look me in the eye and tell me _what_ is it that we are _doing_ exactly. Is there anything to _us_ beyond kissing?. Are we actually involved with one another, Severus, or are we just... friends with snogging benefits? Do you consider me to be yours, or are you willing to share me with another? Do you _want_ to come out of hiding and allow others to understand that we are together, or is our _us _only possible within the four walls of this office?"

His cheeks colored in agitated reaction to these questions. He felt faint with utter discomfort. Couldn't even bring himself to... unwind enough to offer any kind of coherent answer to the gryffindor's complains. What could he really say in his own defence? How could he explain that he felt so disappointed in himself, in his own inability to stick to the formal friendship that he still believed would have benefited Harry the most, that he shivered with distress every time he so much as contemplated facing the opinion of others?. Should he explain how he saw his own acceptance of their strengthening relationship as a terrible, weak-minded act of utter selfishness? Could he explain that he was too cowardly to face Molly Weasley's disappointment in him? Or Minnie's? Could he even begin to make Harry understand that he didn't really want to lose everyone's respect because of his shameful _inability_ to face loneliness? And even if he could... was he actually _willing_ to risk losing Harry altogether in order to keep everyone else's good opinion? _Who_ did he value more than the gryffindor? For _whom_ would he be actually _willing_ to cast the auror away?...

For no one... He wouldn't reject Harry for anyone at all. Not ever...

He couldn't really contemplate the very idea without feeling as if a joy-thirsty Dementor had just ripped the very last hope out of his soul. There was no one he'd choose over Harry himself, except maybe Draco. Or Luc... and he already knew that neither of those two would turn their backs on him over this. They'd probably celebrate it, judging by their constant hints and prodding. By the fact that Luc had actually _bothered_ to intervene already, in order to bring them closer, going as far as to give advice to Harry at one point...

"It distresses me to realize that I... I seem to be failing you at a very basic level, Harry. I have never tried to hurt you in any way. I'm dismayed to learn that my behaviour has driven you to question the sincerity of my intentions towards you."

Harry's whole posture slumped in relieved reaction to his words. A tiny smile curved those young lips upwards and he shook his head wonderingly from side to side, interrupting the flow of Severus' response with a new torrent of his own.

"Even speaking about us forces you to hide behind all that stiff formality... It's not supposed to be that excruciating to talk to your own partner, Severus. It's only _me!._ I know you inside-out. I love you!. I'm telling you that you don't have to... _rush..._ yourself on my account. There's no _need_ for you to retreat behind that forbidding Headmaster persona of yours, OK?. We can deal with anything, as long as we both understand each other's limitations. I'm not trying to criticize you, or force you to change on my account. I just... I need some reassurance that we are both working towards the same thing."

He could feel his own tension dissolving very slowly and understood that they were both stressing too much about... everything!. Harry's heart was very obviously engaged and his own... his own was trembling at the mere possibility of surrendering completely to the kind of emotions that had never truly managed to bring him anything other than despair in the past.

He felt safe, though. And cherished. He felt a contentment so strong that it managed to terrify and amaze him at the same time. But he was being cautious with his own reactions and instincts. Maybe too cautious...

"If you imagine that I'm going to start spouting some ridiculously hufflepufish _mush,_ Potter..."

Riotous laughter halted his affronted response and he blinked. A single look towards the idiot's merry face brought with it the understanding of just how... ridiculous his objection had sounded. Of course Harry wasn't expecting him to start... _gushing_ out nonsense!. That'd be tantamount to the kind of aberration that would make the boy break out into outright worry for his health.

His own attempt at a smile unfurled almost reticently in his face and it was then that he understood how is it possible to find both: exasperation and comfort in just one person. He sat there, relaxed and smiling in his sofa, while the boy fairly chortled beside him and realized that he couldn't continue to... _hide..._ this thing forever. Harry deserved better than to be anyone's secret, let alone his own. He deserved better than to be kissed but not acknowledged before all others. He deserved... _daylight._

"I think you should come back home" he stated suddenly and the laughter died abruptly in the very next second as the auror sat up straight to look him in the eye with a disbelieving expression.

"Really? Are you _sure,_ Severus? I... I don't want to push you too hard and then have you balking out on _us_ due to stress. If there's even a small part of you that is unsure about this, I'm perfectly willing to wait a while longer."

Severus was grateful for the offer, but unwilling to actually take it. He knew himself to be... easily spooked when it came to this thing that they were building. He understood that he was being unfairly reticent about offering the gryffindor all those things that other people expect to find in a romantic partner. He was not the most demonstrative of men in the best circumstances and in this particular case he was still attempting to... _discern_ the extent of his own feelings. He was wrestling with a sense of shamed failure at his own inability to stick to his initial plan of simple friendship.

He felt that he was wrong for the boy. He was too old, too damaged, too _reticent. _He was woefully ill-equipped to provide this lively and generous creature with the same kind of openly acknowledged adoration that the boy so easily bestowed upon him. But he also wanted to forget every one of those damaging misgivings and wholeheartedly reciprocate the generous affection that he so constantly received. He wanted to stop feeling _guilty_ about it all and allow himself to accept the fact that, if Harry was _here,_ then it was because the boy wanted to be, only...

He found it incredibly hard to convince his wary mind to accept such thing. His heart told him that the boy's dodged insistence was born of genuine affection, but his instincts, his fears, his every past experience in this area kept intruding constantly into his thoughts, eroding his already frayed confidence with soul-destroying reminders of just how ugly he was. How ill-tempered and cruel, how... _lacking_ in both charm and good intentions. He felt so utterly unlovely in comparison to the child that his heart trembled with the very real fear that one day... one day Harry might finally open his eyes and realize that he was wasting his life on a nobody.

Thoughts such as these ravaged his confidence. He was losing sleep over them, contemplating them obsessively and feeling too insecure to share them with the boy. He didn't want to come across as a whiny, needy, wreck_._ Didn't want to have to suffer the utter humiliation of coming out and stating his every flaw before this man again. Wasn't sure he'd survive the heartbreaking misery of having Harry actually look at him, see him as he truly was, and leave his life.

As he wrestled with these terrible thoughts the very strength of his own reactions lead him to the startling awareness that his emotions were very definitely engaged. He stiffened from head to toes as the truth finally hit him with all the devastating brutally of a lightning-bolt strike.

His dark eyes widened impossibly and he stared blindly, straight into Harry's worried gaze, as he came to the realization that he needed the boy more than the boy probably needed him. He cherished their time together like a treasure that he might come to lose one day. He felt something _deep_ and _beautiful,_ that much was true, but... was he actually _in_ _love_ with the boy? Could he even go that far after having lost his heart to Lily Evans? And even if he could... was he brave enough to admit it?.

"I don't think it wise to allow my instinctive need for... seclusion... to taint _us_, Harry. Salazar knows that I'm not actually certain if I'll ever be able to relax enough to be truly comfortable with the idea of confronting public opinion on this matter.

I believe myself to be the worst possible individual you could have picked as a romantic partner. But I... I've heard you, loud and clear, every time that you've stubbornly _insisted_ that I am _your_ choice and I'm honestly _trying _to remind myself that it isn't my place to protect you from making this decision. I... I fear that I'd probably end up failing you completely and destroying this relationship beyond recovery, if I allow my own instincts to take over. I want to get _past_ my own insecurities and follow your lead in this, but... it's so hard...

I believe that you deserve to be publicly acknowledged as my... my... _companion._ The man I want to grow closer to. The man whose love I've accepted. I believe that I could open up enough to recognize you as such, as long as you don't require some kind of grand and _vocal_ gesture on my part. I'd be willing to start behaving like your significant other in front of your family and work-colleagues. I'll even accompany you to that Fundraiser of yours, if that's what you need me to do, just... don't abandon me to face it all alone, please. I don't know what I'd do then. How I'd react to that. I... I'd love to look you in the eye and be able to genuinely claim to be as certain about all of _this_ as you are, but I am not. Not yet. I don't even _know_ when that might happen butI want to reassure you, somehow. I want to give you my best effort, Harry, because receiving that much consideration from me is the very least of what you actually deserve."

Harry's hand found his own and he was held tightly then. Their fingers intertwined and trembled together. Their gazes clashed with each other and they both became tangled within a vortex of sheer feeling. It was so strange... to feel this soft gentleness inside. To feel this exposed, this vulnerable, before another. It was even more bizarre to have the irrational certainty that no harm would ever come to him from such exposure. That this weakness was not so much a point of fragility but the strongest thing that he possessed in this second. Harry was fast becoming his shield against all danger. His cavalry. His shelter...

The moment hung, suspended into an eternity of fierce longing, and he felt himself grow impatient for a kiss that, for some unfathomable reason, wasn't coming. His dark eyes lowered to stare almost fixedly at Harry's parted lips and he waited, fairly dizzy with awareness, for the boy to bring their faces closer to each other's.

The auror smiled gently at him, but remained utterly unmovable, making him frown in puzzled confusion. He couldn't actually understand the reason behind Harry's unusual reticence.

Colour tinged his pale cheeks as his eyes sifted once again, encountering a patient, but determined expression turning those bright eyes into a forest-green depiction of blatant invitation. His head turned slightly backwards, mind trying to comprehend what was happening here. _Why_ it was that the other man was... _failing..._ to bring them together, when he'd already indicated his own willingness to be kissed.

A sigh fluttered against his pale visage as Harry's tanned digits abandoned his own and that hand travelled up his left arm in a soothing, staying motion. Gently trying to keep him in place when he would have eased away.

"You can kiss me too, Severus. You can do it any time you feel like it, you know?. I'd love to have you initiate one of our sessions one day, and I thought that maybe you only needed a little push to do it."

He blinked in dazed wonder at the very idea. It had never even crossed his mind that he could be allowed to _avail_ himself of the boy's kisses whenever he so desired. A strange and rather... _warm..._ feeling of... _excitement..._ began to fill his every bone and muscle, his every vein and organ, with a breathless kind of overwhelmed trepidation and he simply sat there, staring dazedly into those incredibly amused green eyes like some kind of moronic little nincompoop.

"This is so awkward..." He managed to stutter after a second or two of mortifying paralysis. The sheer heat that he could feel burning his cheekbones into embarrassed crimson fire seemed to turn Harry into some sort of mushy devotee, and his face was carefully framed by the gryffindor's tanned hands. His long hair was brushed aside with gentle fingertips as the boy forced their eyes into collision once again.

"You are beautiful to me, my love. I know I haven't properly addressed yet all that nonsense you were telling Malfoy about when he was last here, but... you've got to understand that you could never be the worst possible choice for me. That is a ridiculous idea. It's _untrue_ and it's _unfair_ to both of us. You are, without a doubt, one of the most precious souls that I have ever encountered, Severus. I love you. I want everything you have to give me and that includes your kisses, too. There's no need for you to be so embarrassed about this. All that shyness of yours has no place here, between us. It's only me, don't you see?. We've kissed dozens of times already and this will be the same... There are no hidden pitfalls here, no further risk involved. Just... try it. You know I'll catch you every time, don't you?. All you have to do is try..."

His eyes closed in a bout of utter panic and he felt his long eyelashes brush the tips of the boy's fingers. Harry's patient, even breaths fanned his face as they both remained frozen for a single, doubt-filled heartbeat. Then he swallowed convulsively and allowed his own mind to come to terms with the undeniable fact that he actually _wanted_ to do this. He wanted to kiss this man who held him so lovingly. He wanted to take comfort from Harry's caresses, whenever he felt the need for them. He didn't want to hold onto passivity, to be the kind of man who'd brainlessly accept the auror's touch only when it was offered, like some sort of submissive little lump...

He wanted to be something _other_ than a willing, surrendering participant in this relationship that they were, so carefully, building from scratch. He wanted them to be _equal._ He wanted to embrace the kind of confidence that would allow him to stop behaving like a soldier being lead by his commander. He'd been always a _follower._ Always...

He hadn't ever trusted his own instincts and choices enough, when it came to his personal needs and desires, and that had resulted in his damaging tendency of allowing himself to be used for somebody else's purposes at every stage of his life. He'd been Luc's sidekick and Albus' second in command. He'd been the Dark Lord's spy and Lily's doormat friend...

He didn't want to fall into the same routine anymore. He didn't want to teach himself to accept Harry's every suggestion or desire. He wanted to have a say in what they did, in _how_ they did it, and here was the boy telling him that he... he could have exactly that. Starting right now...

His eyes flickered open once again and he looked into a veritable sea of eager anticipation. A small smile curved his lips upwards and the wild flock of butterflies that were dancing in his stomach settled into a single, pounding thrum of quiet intensity.

He could do _this._ He _would_ do _this._ There was no one else here but them, and his gryffindor would help him if he faltered...

Trembling digits rose towards that messy mass of hair that he now loved to turn even messier. The soft tufts of ebony curls that tickled his sensitive finger-pads brought him the comforting association of... _home _and it was then, at that very moment, that he finally understood that it was true. He was falling in love with this young man, if he hadn't done so already. He was being irrevocably conquered by Harry's gentle patience. By his quiet but blatant devotion. By his assertive insistence that they could become more than they had always been, that they could both find shelter together.

With a sigh he brought their faces within inches of each other and he felt it in his palms when Harry adjusted his own position very minutely, adapting himself to Severus' greater height. Their noses missed one another, thanks to that last minute shift, and it was then that he could see his path run clear all the way to the parted lips that were waiting, so eagerly, for him. His eyes closed as their mouths finally connected on his own terms for the first time and, as he felt Harry's lips unfurl open for him, responding to his caress with obvious, passionate enjoyment, he felt so much joy that he started to tremble. The kiss deepened as Harry reacted to his nervousness, bringing their chests closer by the simple action of hugging him quite tightly and he sighed within the auror's embrace, utterly contented.

He didn't know how long they kissed nor did he care. He only knew that he adored every single second of it. He felt closer to the other man, somehow. He felt a boldness that he'd never felt before and there was a kind of incredibly liberating elation running through his veins. He kissed the boy again. And again!. He _delighted_ in that freedom until they were both breathless with anxious excitement and filled to burst with a childish mirth born from sheer, relieved, tenderness.

Harry's head settled against his shoulder after a while and they both spent hours just... cuddling. His own fingers traced patterns in the wilderness of the auror's hair and both their eyes became lost in the window as the sun reached lower and lower on the horizon. Sunset colours bathed his office, filling the growing shadows with purple-tinted beauty, and he understood for the first time that Harry was like his own personal sunset. Or sunrise...

The auror fought the shadows that hid within his own damaged heart with the light of his persistent presence on a daily basis. He'd managed, against all the odds, to bring Severus' intrinsic darkness into a nuanced kaleidoscope of color that allowed him, for the very first time in his life, to find brief glimpses of genuine beauty within himself.

He'd discovered, in recent weeks, that he actually _liked_ the man he could become in Harry's presence. He liked the man he could envision, reading between the lines of the boy's comments. The man that Harry saw, whenever he looked at him. The one that he, himself, had never even managed to glimpse before the gryffindor had forced him to look beyond the horror reflected on the despised surface of a mirror...

He was happy, truly happy, in this utterly simple moment. He held his hope for the future in his arms. He had no more pain to endure in the months and years to come and this could be, so very easily, what the rest of his life looked like. The very idea made him smile form ear to ear. His eyes shone with a bright joy in the lengthening shadows and he could not see the darkness that surrounded him, at all. He could only see the bright shine of the first stars as they slowly began to wink into silver coloured life up in the sky.

He could only feel the quiet, strong beating of his own heart. Feel the weight of Harry's body as it settled into slumber against his chest. Feel this instant burn with the kind of magic that had never truly graced him before. Heart magic surrounded him, enfolded him. Embraced him and held him in this instant of such perfect contentment that he was finally unable to deny the most shocking of truths: if he were to die today, right at this second, he'd still have lived a better, brighter existence in these last few months than he'd ever experienced in the whole of the forty years that preceded them. His throat closed at that realization and his hands curled protectively around Harry's wide chest.

A small snore rewarded his efforts and he blinked in astonished surprise at finding himself in the strange position of veiling the other man's sleep, without some sort of dire circumstances having made the very action somehow necessary. Neither of them was in danger or in hiding. Neither had been placed in this room, on this sofa, in the circle of the other's arms by foreign force...

He was here by his own choice and so was Harry. This was _home._ This was _safety._ This was _everything_ that he'd ever wanted and then some... All of it was being offered to him on a silver platter, without invisible strings or cruel tricks attached. He'd be an absolute fool if he let this treasure go...

It was then that he finally realized that he had started to believe in the possibility of a bright and happier future for himself. One that held respect and love. One that held... _this._ The very notion froze him into stillness for a heartbeat and he shook with the utter wonder of it all.

The moment stretched into perfect quietude for a long time and, as the stars rose one by one, and began to blink softly down over the both of them, he understood that dreams were made at night to be threaded from this beauty. From this peace. From this lovely, stilled fragment of eternity that could, so very easily, rob any man's breath away...

"If there's a chance for me to ever re-learn how to love another properly, then this has to be it, Harry" He dared to speak his thoughts aloud into the darkness. _Dared_ to voice his every hope, his every dream and all of those fragile little things that fluttered, like trapped wisps of half-formed longing, within his increasingly confident awareness, into whispered life.

"It can only be _you_, of that I'm finally certain. If I could write my own fate, if I could choose the rest of my own life, then this will be it. I want this peaceful contentment. This wonderful sense of safety. I want to hold onto the belief that I can make this beauty mine forever...

Please Merlin, I beg of you, do not force me to abandon _this. _Not now that I've finally found it..."

TBC...

A/N: In Omnem _Vitam* roughly translates as "for life"._


	38. Chapter 38

_**THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 38**_

The ministry ballroom shone under the bright light of about a thousand enchanted candles and a quartet played softly on a raised platform in the corner.

The food was surprisingly hearty and the company, although boisterous, was also perfectly respectful around him. Harry kept a hand firmly curled on the small of his back that seemed to be drawing an unusual level of attention from everyone around them and he tried to ignore the fact that they were the focus of everyone's interest.

He'd agreed to come to the Auror-corps Annual Fundraiser of his own free will and he had no intention of allowing his ridiculous reticence to advertise their close relationship quite this openly to cause Harry further reason for doubting the sincerity of his commitment.

"Shall I bring you some apple juice or would you prefer water, Severus?"

His eyes widened with horror as he realized that the boy was planning to abandon him in the middle of the room, in order to go fetch more drinks, and he had to swallow hard to avoid snapping out the flustered demand, for the child to stay put, that was rising up the back of his throat. Harry had actually stuck to him like glue throughout the evening. They'd sat together and were never apart more than five or six feet from one another at the most. The boy had hovered around him like an anxious mother hen, dragging him to meet this or that other colleague who had to be acknowledged by the head of their department, in an obvious attempt to ease Severus' own nervousness. He'd been paraded around, in front of a truly dizzying number of widely smiling aurors, with dismaying enthusiasm. Harry gushed about him to whoever was within hearing range, extolling supposed virtues that he'd never even guessed he possessed with a soppily devoted look that discomfited him greatly. He was being treated like a treasure of untold value. He was being openly cherished and adored without any sort of restraint or even embarrassment.

He understood that he had to learn to cope with their relationship better, as they both were very public figures and there seemed to be an inordinately amount of... attention... directed towards their personal lives. He realized that he had to come to terms with the fact that his partner tended to be rather open about his emotions, while he himself possessed a more restrained nature. He also understood that he was a grown man of forty who was currently behaving like a timorous thirteen year old. His cheekbones turned pink with the embarrassment of knowing that he'd been trying to hide behind Harry's figurative skirts all night long. He took a single step away from the boy, trying hard to ignore the trepidation that the very idea of being left to his own devices in this room, even if it was only for a second, caused him. He curled his trembling digits into lose fists and lowered them, as nonchalantly as he could bring himself to do it, against his sides. His head turned away from his companion, trying to hide his suddenly ashen face from the intense, green-eyed scrutiny that the boy was trying to subject him to and his dark gaze centered frantically on the dance floor, staring at it blindly.

"I... I'd prefer water, if you don't mind, Harry"

A beat of silence followed and, for a second he truly believed that he'd managed to hide his sudden discomfort from the boy.

"Are you alright, Severus? You look... upset"

He tried to smile but his lips felt stiff and unresponsive. He was mostly certain that he looked about as terrified as he felt and the truth was that, even though he would have preferred to be anywhere but here in this very second, there was no one else he'd rather be with in all the world. He had to go through _this._ He had to learn to cope with it, somehow. He had to... find a way to _belong_ in parties such as this one, where candlelight and dancing were expected and alcohol was freely being consumed by almost everyone.

"I'm a bit tired, that's all. You know how I prefer to avoid this kind of events. I'm finding it all a bit trying. But I'm fine, I promise..."

Gentle fingertips curled around his painfully thin chin and pulled on it, mercilessly forcing him to turn around once more and face the owner of the bright green eyes that settled on his slightly flushed visage with obvious concern. All that callused hand had to do then was raise minutely, in order to press it's warm palm against his crimson-colored cheek with utter devotion.

"We could go right now, if you want. I've already shown my face and the food is all gone. There's no need for you to suffer through this any longer. Not on my account, Severus. I've done my duty and now I'm on my own time. I have every right to whisk you away from here and vanish, if I want to. I'm actually amazed that you've lasted this long without bolting."

Sheer relief flooded his whole being from head to toes at that moment. He was grateful to know that he'd done well enough by Harry. He felt accomplished and proud of himself in a way that he'd very rarely experienced when it came to any of his relationships. He was used to being a disappointment, a lost cause. A source of pain and disillusion. He had never really done well by anyone, unless they were talking about Draco... But Draco was his godchild and had only ever required genuine interest and affection on his part.

"I told you that I'd behave, didn't I? I very rarely break my promises, you know?"

Harry's palm rubbed affectionately against his cheek and the very tip of those blunt fingers caressed his fluttering eyelashes gently. The boy smiled fondly, giggling under his breath at the ticklish contact and then proceeded to go as far as to curl a single lock of Severus' dark hair around the delicate shell of his left ear.

"I know that, Severus. I've always known that. And I'm glad that you are here. That we are not hiding any longer. I'm thankful that you are actually granting me the joy of touching you like this, in front of anyone who cares to look our way. I feel like the luckiest man on Earth right now..."

His throat closed with emotion and he couldn't have moved away from this one man for all the gold in Gringotts. His eyes shone like wide, black coals in his flushed face and a truly beautiful, shy smile curved his lips.

"The luckiest man on Earth would be dancing right now, Potter. He wouldn't be ignoring music as heavenly as this, no matter what"

Laughter broke across the lips of his companion and those emerald green eyes flashed with contentment.

"You are impossible!. Why can't you just come out with it and say you want to dance without implying that I'm, somehow, deficient?

He was so unused to bantering with anyone that, for a very fleeting second, he actually thought that he'd genuinely offended Harry.

His smile froze and he blinked with worry, then the boy's too warm fingers settled on his shoulder and squeezed gently. The moment stretched as their gazes clashed with one another and he felt crippled with nerves once more. Tense and utterly awkward. Flustered. Uneasy...

"I'd love to dance..." He stuttered out finally, hoping for Harry to recognize his struggles and step into the breach. The boy didn't disappoint him. A single look from those bright green eyes and the gryffindor's expressive face seemed to _melt_ with obvious adoration.

"Then come here, Headmaster. I've been waiting all night long to twirl under these lights with you..."

They were gone in the next second, hands entwined, chests aligned, breaths mingling with one another as their eyes became entangled. Ensnared. Imprisoned within the darkened gaze of their companion. The music reached their ears as if through a thick veil made from the most fragile of gossamers and the lights floated around them, bathing their enraptured expressions in a slight golden glow that painted them with beauty.

He felt as light as butterfly wings as his feet fairly floated around the ballroom. He felt wonderfully alive and safe and happy. He was dancing with his Harry and it felt right for him to be here, out in the open. Silently acknowledging before all others, at long last, what they both had been to one another for a while now. They were here. They were together. They belonged in each other's arms.

One song led to another and it seemed as if they floated within a bubble of contentment. He could not stop dancing. Could not stop feeling the heavy beat of his heart thundering against his wrists, his ears, against his narrow chest, with strength enough to make him feel giddy with joy.

He began to smile brightly, almost without his knowledge, and was only aware that he was doing it when Harry's feet faltered and the boy told him with a roughened gasp:

"Your smile, Severus, it's so beautiful..."

His mind was somehow too full of a bubbly sort of happiness to bother feeling bashful at that second, so he smiled even further. His eyes glowed like dark silk and his hair whirled around his flushed face with every step that he took. He laughed aloud, feeling carefree and happy. Then he twirled, twirled, twirled... until he felt himself become dizzy with sensation and he had to come to a stop lest he fall down to the floor. He closed his dark eyes, against the speedy rush of images flying past them, and lowered his forehead until it rested against Harry's hard shoulder, trying to catch his breath.

"You both look as if you are having a great time, Mr. Potter. Would you care to make a comment for the morning edition of the Prophet?"

The moment shattered into a million pieces of fragmented loveliness when the overly-sweet voice of Rita Skeeter reached their ears and he tried to lift his face away from Harry's chest without success. The boy's fingers had tangled in the back of his neck and were holding him fast, whether in an attempt to grant him privacy, by keeping his face sheltered, or in a show of unity, meant to defy the poisonous articles that the journalist had been peppering the papers with in the last few months, he couldn't tell for certain. Harry's shoulder had tensed to the point were it now felt like a boulder made of granite. Severus could feel the rigid muscles underneath the thick velvety cloth of the auror's formal robes and, when the boy spoke, the gentle voice that he'd learned to associate with the young man had been transformed into a frostily formal rendition of the very same kind of polite verbal loathing that Luc excelled at.

"I am happy to inform you that tonight's Fundraiser has been an incredible success. The families of aurors who've been maimed or even lost in action, during the course of the past year, can now count on some desperately needed economic support thanks to the donations we've received today. Please feel free to extend my heartfelt thanks to the general public for their generosity"

There was a faint sound of coarse scratching against paper as that vile woman's Dicto-quill hurried to copy Harry's words in the brief silence than ensued.

"Ummm... yes, yes. I can see how the occasion has managed to bring out some of the most influential people in today's society. Some of tonight's attendees are men who've become very hard to track indeed. That, of course, could be applied directly to you, Headmaster Snape. I must admit that I'm shocked to see you here. Are you particularly _fond_ of the auror corps?"

The moment she'd dared to address him directly his whole frame stilled into the kind of fight or flight stance that had so often helped him scape dangerous situations during the war. He was now utterly aware of the thick silence around them. He could tell that the music was weakening dangerously and the loud giggling of the dancers had began to diminish as everyone's attention started to center around them. He tried to push against Harry's restraining hand, in order to turn around and face her, but that turned out to be impossible, as the boy seemed determined to deal with the woman all by himself.

"This isn't the right time for this, Mrs. Skeeter. You are actually incurring in a severe breach of the rules that I know for a fact were attached to every invitation that was delivered to all members of the press. I'm sure you know that the ministry is taking great pains to protect the privacy of every single benefactor who has been gracious enough to donate either their time or their money to this cause"

A single gasp of utterly faked surprise escaped the journalist's throat before a jarringly sweet pearl of laughter shattered the silence.

"I'm just asking for a comment about the party, Auror Potter. I haven't actually attempted to press the Headmaster here for any sort of _personal_ information. You, better than most, should know that a quote from him would drive my article straight into the front page, instead of leaving it relegated to the back of the society news..."

Harry's stance became even more rigid and he knew that the boy was a mere breath away from saying something truly unforgivable to this merciless shark. She'd love to have some seriously damaging nonsense to quote, along with whatever nasty spin her twisted head was already planing to add to her article.

He took a very deep breath, praying to every God he could remember the name of, to be granted strength enough to deal with the situation. Then he dared to raise his hand, bringing it into trembling contact with his companion's stone-like forearm, and squeezed on it gently in a bid to draw the man's attention to himself. Harry's arm twitched under his fingers and the digits that held him fast loosened slightly against his nape. He used the moment to pull himself free from the boy's the protective hold. Straightening to his full, intimidating height in the next second and sharing a single, reassuring look with the auror. Then he turned his emotionless black eyes towards the delicately built blond woman who stood so eagerly beside them. She was smiling widely at them, attempting to portray a very obviously faked air of innocence while playing with the fluffy, magically-enhanced feathered quill that rested menacingly against an ever-growing length of hastily scrawled parchment. A sudden flash blinded him in the next instant, as a picture was taken of them both, and he blinked rapidly in order to rid himself of the small pinpricks of light that danced before his overwhelmed pupils.

"You are looking rather dapper, Headmaster. I must say your recovery has been as fast as it's been troubled. We've been very concerned about your health for a while now. Are you feeling any better? There have been certain aspersions cast over your current ability to perform magically, you know? I'm not sure if there are any rules about a squib being allowed to hold as exalted a position as the one you are currently occupying, but I could... look... into it"

He'd barely had time to open his mouth when Harry's incensed growl rendered any answer he might have been willing to offer her utterly pointless.

"No personal questions, Rita. You'll respect the rules of this event or I swear I'll have you thrown out of here!"

Her quill fairly quivered with enjoyment as it proceeded to copy Harry's every word with a relish that shouldn't have been so obvious in an inanimate object.

"Oopps! Touchy... I'm sorry if I upset you, Auror Potter. So sorry... Tell me, Headmaster, Are you enjoying the party?"

"Yes"

She blinked behind her fashionable rhinestone glasses and smiled rather coldly at him.

"That's a rather... succinct answer, don't you think?. As I was telling Mr. Potter here, any printed comment of yours is likely to raise the profile of this event exponentially. One never knows what kind of late-donations might be waiting to pour on the head auror's table come the morning... I'm sure you wouldn't want to jeopardize the possibility of _inspiring_ our readers into further generosity with such... spartan... contribution to my piece, would you?"

By now it was clearly obvious that the whole room had become aware of their interaction and not even the quartet was bothering to play any longer. Everyone stood utterly still, as if frozen to the spot by a generalized Petrificus hex. Everyone was silent. Enthralled. Eagerly awaiting whatever it was that he cared to offer in answer, as if that was of any importance at all. They'd all come here for the children of wounded aurors. They'd come to honor those who protected civilian society, day in and day out, for a mere pittance. They'd come together because they all understood that they were those among them, perfectly ordinary people whom this shark of a journalist would never dare to corner for a quote, that deserved the kind of recognition that they'd never get otherwise... He looked straight into her pale blue eyes with the kind of vexed coldness that would have frozen his fellow Death Eaters to the spot and his tone was arctic when he answered her quietly.

"I admire every auror greatly. They all try their very best to protect us all from danger and, for that, they certainly deserve my appreciation."

"Really? I was rather of the opinion that you had very unpleasant clashes with law-enforcement before, Headmaster."

Harry growled next to him and he was forced to put his arm around the incensed gryffindor's shoulders.

"Everyone had a part to play during the war, Mrs. Skeeter. Everyone who fought that is. I can't, in good conscience, resent the aurors for dealing with me as they saw fit at the time. They believed me to be a Death Eater and they were correct in that particular assumption. Regardless of my true allegiance to The Light, every auror I encountered in those dark days was acting with the genuine intention of protecting the general public. That is commendable in and of itself. It's what we are all here to remember.

Our day to day safety rests on the hands of a few brave men and women. Sometimes their lives are lost in the course of their attempts to protect us. Let's give them something back in return for their efforts. Let's remember those who fell and honor them. Let's remember them with gratefulness and look after the loved ones they've left behind... That's why I'm here tonight. Why every single one of us is here, I hope. What else could I possibly add to make your article worthy, Madam? I'd have thought the cause itself would have done _that._.."

Thunderous applause broke across the room in a wave of almost ferocious fervor and he was utterly startled when Harry whirled him around and kissed him fiercely on the lips. He responded to the unexpected caress without being actually conscious of where they were or what they were supposed to be doing. He forgot that one of the most determined journalists in the wizarding world was standing right beside them in that second. They slowly parted ways and looked straight into each other's eyes, both wide-eyed and utterly flushed. Both breathless and dazed. Both astonished by the powerful strength of the emotions that seemed to have taken them by storm.

Flashes whirled all around them, like bursts of white, disruptive fire, but neither gave them further thought for the moment. Then that blasted woman's voice intruded in their world for the second time with another obnoxious question.

"Wow... that was some seriously intriguing display. Are we to assume from this that you are both involved with each other officially, or is this just... a publicity stunt to aide a great cause?"

He saw Harry's kiss-swollen lips compress into a severely irritated line but he himself ended up laughing with inexplicable amusement. He was _here._ He'd been caught on camera being kissed by Harry Potter in the middle of a Ministry dance... there was no point in acting all coy now. No point in trying to hint subtly at their togetherness. No point in refusing to face this thing that he'd learned to value above many others. It was time to give the man who loved him so patiently the daylight he deserved.

"Those who know me would be happy to confirm for you that I never willingly engage in useless lying. Publicity stunts, no matter how well intentioned they might be, are better left to the actual experts in such things. I, myself, prefer the far more traditional approach of simple honesty. Harry Potter has a place in my life, Mrs Skeeter. He holds a place that no one else holds. A place that's only _his._ That's all I'm willing to tell you at this point"

He didn't even see her quill copying his words, didn't even see the greedy expression that crossed her small features, didn't even _hear_ the contented gasps of the crowd that surrounded them. He had eyes only for Harry and for the wide smile that was flowering, like a rare, coveted orchid, across the lips of the man who'd brought him here.

"It is enough, Severus" The boy whispered hoarsely and embraced him too tightly, pressing a flushed, contented face against the formal robes that covered his chest. "That is more than enough for me, my love. It's more than I had hoped. It's just... perfect!..."

The words fluttered against his heart as Harry's messy head came into gentle contact with his shoulder. He swallowed convulsively and lifted his own hands, closing them protectively around the auror's wide back. He'd barely had time to lift his head and look straight into the very satisfied face of a grinning Rita Skeeter before he felt the tell-tale signs of side-long apparition.

A second later the ballroom had dissolved into whirling shades of gray and they stood together outside the tall doors of Hogwarts. Moonlight bathed the grounds in silver beauty and the stars above shone with distant brightness, adding a magical sense of fragile purity to the perfectly still night.

"I'm sorry I kissed you like that. I... I should have kept my cool, I know, but you... You were brilliant, Severus! You put that little monster in her place and what you said about my aurors was so beautiful that I... I couldn't resist touching you..."

Potion-tainted fingers rose to press against Harry's lips gently, in a shushing gesture that he'd never before performed on anyone.

"It's alright, Harry. Everything is alright, I promise you. I'm not hiding from _this_ any longer. We... we are together, OK?. We have now been together for a while. We do exist outside the walls of my office, no matter how convinced you might have been that we do not. This... this was _inevitable._ It was going to come sooner or later, no matter what. I had to take this step and I'm glad it happened in this way. I'm glad I had no time to agonize for days over making _this_ decision. I honestly believe that I work better under pressure.

I'm not ashamed of you, you know?. I'm not ashamed of _this. _Now our relationship is finally out into the open. It's no longer a secret kept indoors. Now you know, just as I've known for a while, that you... you are important to me, Harry. Important enough to deserve both my effort and my acknowledgement. Important enough for me to step out of my comfort zone and... speak out loud. Important enough for me to try _being_ the man that you so richly deserve to have beside you. You are important enough for me to allow myself to risk it all in the hope that, one day, I might actually become the kind of man who is genuinely worthy of you..."

TBC...


	39. Chapter 39

_**THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 39**_

The middle of February was upon him so fast that he reeled. He could not recall exactly what he'd done with the last weeks of his life. They'd just... flashed by and disappeared in a literal whirl of work and increasingly longer evenings shared with Harry...

One day they were nearing the end of January and the next thing he noticed was that Valentine-day-fever was taking over the school with the speed of a derailed train-engine. He was shocked to discover that Minnie was expecting him to _decide_ how they should celebrate the ridiculous date.

"You wish for me to do _what?"_ He looked at her in blank befuddlement when she'd addressed him with that perfectly deranged assumption. Her request had been so unexpected that he hadn't been able to control the absolute horror that turned his usually even tone of voice into a guttural half-screech and his pale face flushed scarlet when a smattering of truly amused titters began to roll around the staff room.

To his shocked dismay Minnie remained perfectly serious. Her brown gaze confronted him, over the top of her square glasses, and her mouth became a pinched thin line when she turned an absolutely terrifying glare around the room.

"Something must be done to acknowledge the day, Severus!. There is an unprecedented level of excitement this year, as it'll be the very first one with _you_ actually heading the celebrations. Christmas was such a success, wasn't it?. Now every single student is bouncing with the expectation of what you are going to come up with for Valentines' day. You can't possibly disappoint the children!..."

"Yule is a perfectly reasonable tradition that has magical roots all the way back to Merlin, Minerva. Valentine's day is just a load of nonsense!. There's _nothing_ of value to the date except for the overly hopeful expectation to receive Honeydukes chocolates and the embarrassment to be had by all of us, when we are unwillingly forced to witness the overly mushy declarations of one teenager to another in every corridor."

"Severus Snape! I can't believe I'm hearing you spout such nonsense in my presence! Love is the energy that built this very school and kept it safe. Love was the weapon that destroyed the Dark Lord and brought us all to peace. Love is the most powerful form of magic known to any wizard, and it's celebration is of utmost importance to all of us!"

He shrank against the backrest of his chair and stared, wide-eyed, into Minnie's absolutely livid face. He was wishing, so very hard, for the floor to open and miraculously swallow him whole that it was only when Weasley snorted noisily that his attention was re-directed to the horrible discussion.

"Come on, Minerva... Why don't you give the man a break and tell him that the kids are betting on how far he'll be willing to relax his starchy approach to school discipline for the day?. The little beasts have started a poll over the chances that Snape here will ignore the date altogether and serve a good, old-fashioned, steak-and-kidney pie for dinner"

Surprisingly, it was Longbottom who came charging to his rescue with an irritated huff:

"Knock that off, George!. The kids are having a harmless bit of fun at the Headmaster's expense, that's all. I don't think any of them actually believes him to be lacking in any way. They are loving that reward system that was implemented back in October. I've personally seen a sixty per cent improvement in the quality of the material that my students are turning in these days. Everyone wants to make the cut for an Exceeds Expectations, so that they might earn their tickets for the Sunday cinema showings. The thing is so popular that it has even replaced Hogsmeade as a preferred activity for many of the kids. They are even taking their dates to the shows..."

Horrified dark eyes settled on Longbottom as he gasped out a truly stressed:

_"What?._ The Cinema showings are a reward for good grades, not an opportunity to engage in... _mischief..._ while the films are underway. Maybe there should be some adult supervision put in place..."

Minnie looked at him fondly.

"Don't spoil the magic of it for the kids, Severus!. You _insisted_ on having it done, despite everyone else's reservations, and it has proven to be a huge success. Enrolment for the muggle studies course has increased ten-fold, because of the appealing nature of the activity that you chose to introduce the children to.

That concession table idea was truly inspired too, and the most enterprising members of the houses are making an absolute mint by exchanging their extra-sweets with one another before the shows. If you add too many rules now, it'll become far less enjoyable for them and the wonderful results we are seeing might be affected"

His frown deepened as her impassioned defence of the little monsters made him falter. He did not want to jeopardize the program, but... there was no way that he could just _condone_ that sort of unseemly behaviour. Not once he'd become aware of it.

"It's still not right, Minerva... This is a _school,_ for Merlin's sake!. I can't possibly turn a blind eye to the fact that the children are using a board-sanctioned activity as a dating venue"

"If they want to go out together they'll do it either way, Godfather. Trying to ban public displays of affection from school grounds won't make them happen any less. They'll just hide it better. Having constant patrolling on the Astronomy tower never stopped _me_ from losing my virginity under the stars, you know?"

Now Severus was so flustered that he snapped his quill in half. Thick gobs of ink spurted all over his pale hands, bathing both his skin and robes with heavy dark ink. Everyone was so startled by his reaction that they gaped idiotically at him until Minnie intervened with a sharply toned:

"I believe there's absolutely no need to discus your past affairs with the rest of your colleagues, professor Malfoy!"

Draco's pale complexion blushed pink. He looked both flustered and worried as his beautiful grey gaze alternated between Minnie's forbidding expression and the aged hand that she'd curled, in a motherly and reassuring gesture, around Severus' own shoulder.

"I didn't mean to offend anyone's sensibilities. I was just pointing out a fact that I thought shouldn't be ignored. We've all been there and done that. It's not as if it'll shock anyone to have it said, for Salazar's sake!"

Severus would have choked on his drink had he accepted the tall glass of water that his deputy was so insistently trying to press into his sweaty palm. He hoped that it was indeed impossible for anybody else to realize just how... out of his depth he truly felt when it came to discussing this particular topic.

He looked curiously around the room, surveying all those present thoughtfully. Had they all really shared clandestine assignations in the Astronomy tower with someone?. Was he then, the only one among them who'd never experienced _that_ particular situation?. He felt suddenly inadequate. Flawed, somehow. Conscious of his own lack of... attractiveness in a way that he tended to ignore most of the time.

"That's beside the point, professor Malfoy. We are now in the position of having to at least appear to be engaged in the act of protecting our students' _presumed_ _innocence_, regardless of how strongly we might suspect that they no longer have it!"

Severus was so shocked by that blatant confirmation of Draco's claim, that he stared at his deputy with an horrified sort of sudden awareness. _Minnie_ had... she had done the _unthinkable_ in the astronomy tower!.

His mind shorted with the realization that he'd never actually thought of her as a sexual being. Looking at his colleagues now he could see the way that Fillius was biting his lip harshly, as if trying to contain a sudden bout of laughter, his eyes flashed with a merry light of obvious reminiscence. The same could be said of Poppy. And Aurora. Even Madam Pince was flushed a bright red colour and looking pointedly towards the floor...

Abject misery swept through him then. He felt worthless from the inside out and from head to toes. He sat there, frozen speechless in his high-backed chair, as he wrestled with the idea that he might very possibly be the last virgin left in Hogwarts. For some reason that idea brought him the worst kind of discouraged heartbreak...

How could he be less appealing than Fillius or even Hagrid?. How could he be considered less approachable than Minnie?. How had he... _failed..._ to ensnare the sexual interest of a single person, in the whole of his life, when it was plainly obvious that everyone around him had managed it, at one point or another?...

His thoughts whirled as he pondered that dismaying truth, he was so lost in his ruminations that he wasn't aware of the fact that he'd lost all colour. His dark eyes shone with a feverish brightness and he looked so sick that Draco could not resist the impulse of standing up and walking towards him.

"Godfather, are you all right? You don't look so well..."

He jumped when his boy's fingers settled gently over his arm and his head turned towards that beloved and obviously worried face. His throat constricted and he found it hard to swallow past the thick knot that was logged within it as his mind frantically searched for any plausible excuse to explain away his behaviour.

"I'm afraid that I hadn't considered the need to plan any sort of celebration for that day. I'm chagrined to confess that I've come... woefully unprepared to this meeting and have, therefore, wasted everybody's time. I'm sorry."

Draco's fingers squeezed his limb gently. Grey eyes searched his own with a focused intensity that was only a breath away from actual suspicion. It was obvious to him that his godchild sensed that there was something else on his mind, but wasn't willing to challenge him in front of the others. His eyelids lowered, veiling the expression within them from his godson's scrutiny, and he turned slightly around to face the rest of the room.

"I'll have to cancel this meeting and rearrange it for another time. Maybe day after tomorrow, around six?"

There were nods of easy acceptance all around and even a few joking comments, about having been granted a reprieve from the interminable boredom of a staff meeting, were uttered among the younger gryffindors. Severus sighed when he realized that Draco hadn't moved away from his side and his pale hand rose to rub the bump on the bridge of his nose with frustrated discomfort.

The rest of his staff slowly wandered outside, while his nosy godchild looked down at him with a deep frown marring his pale beauty. Draco's delicately curved mouth looked thin and pinched, betraying the mulish stubbornness that characterized all Malfoys.

"I want to know what's the matter with you, Godfather. Are you feeling unwell?"

He wriggled in his chair to gain some time, attempting to come up with some sort of explanation that wouldn't necessarily expose to the eyes of his boy just how... shamefully _maudlin..._ he'd become in his old age.

"I was caught off guard by the idea of organizing the Valentine's celebrations, Draco. I wasn't expecting the request and it threw me off rather badly. That is all. I need time to come up with some sort of workable proposal."

Draco's inelegant snort was a testament to how out of practice in the fine art of misdirection he was nowadays.

"That's troll dung and you know it, Severus!. You were flustered, but you were fine until I disagreed with your brilliant idea of trying to restrict the children's dating efforts. Did you interpret my objection to your plan as a lack of loyalty on my part? Is that it?"

Hearing so much nonsense being spouted at him in that disconcerted and wounded tone of voice brought a sudden frown to his pale forehead. His dark eyes rose swiftly to clash with the shadowed beauty of Draco's own.

"Loyalty isn't measured by how many times we agree to uphold another's opinions, Draco. It's measured by how many times we return to the side of those we are loyal to, _regardless_ of the fact that our ideas might not actually coincide."

A small, wavering smile curved his godson's lips and a hand that was as exquisitely pale as it was certain, rose towards his waxy cheek and caressed it with the kind of pensive gentleness that could topple off a giant.

"I know that I don't say this as often as I should anymore, Godfather, but... for what is worth, I want you to understand that you have been a constant well of unusual wisdom in my life. I don't even want to imagine what kind of little monster I'd have become if it weren't for some of the things that you've taught me. I do love you with all of my heart, but you already know that, don't you?. I just... I can't bear for you to look this upset!"

His mind reeled with the strength of his own reaction to those very simple words. His emotions were too close to the surface for him to be able to manage them with his usual detachment. He felt _hammered_ by an overwhelming sense of affection for this young man who was worth... _everything..._ to him.

"You shouldn't worry so much about me, Draco. I'm doing as reasonably well as can be expected from someone in my situation. Everything is still so new... Everything has changed beyond recognition from what I last remember. Sometimes it feels as if I've fallen down a fairy hole and re-awoken in a different world altogether. But I'm doing better know. I'm growing used to this. Things will settle even more as time moves on and then... all these up and downs that I'm experiencing at the moment will become a thing of the past."

Draco's searching gaze raked his thin face for a long time.

"So it's just stress. Are you sure?. Is there something _wrong_ between you and Harry?"

He was so startled by the unexpected question that he jumped and his dark eyes widened with flummoxed confusion.

"Harry?. Why would you assume that I'd be adversely affected if there was something the matter between us, Draco?"

The boy chuckled under his breath. Light grey eyes lit with the sort of amusement that Severus most despised when it was so clearly obtained at his expense.

"I'd imagine that you'll be as _adversely_ _affected_ by something being wrong between the two of you, as you are _positively_ _affected_ by everything being right.

I've never seen you as happy as you've looked these past weeks, Godfather. And Harry... he is so cheerful since you allowed him to return to the castle that it makes my teeth grit, whenever I hear his obnoxious whistling. It's just _wonderful_ to see. You... you've found peace, have you not?. Your eyes shine and you smile all the time, for no reason at all. You didn't even recoil in horror the last time Poppy hugged you in the staff room."

He felt a burning blast of embarrassed blushing spread across his neck and cheeks.

"I couldn't have rejected Poppy's emotional _outbursts_ in good conscience, Draco. She is a very dear friend. And about Harry... well, it wasn't really in my power to forbid his return. The ministry gave him those rooms. I hadn't even _known_ that he was keeping away on purpose. How was I supposed to imagine that, after conning me into living with him, he'd suddenly developed a _conscience_ and decided that he'd made me too uncomfortable already to keep pushing me any further?"

Draco laughed heartily. Blond hair swung around his beautiful face as he shook it slyly.

"Gryffindors! They do _everything_ back to front, don't they?. He pushes you and pushes you, until you feel like screaming, and when you finally surrender, he retreats!. They are all so bloody _frustrating."_

Startled black eyes narrowed with the suspicion that they had ceased talking specifically about Harry.

"Draco... do I need to brew an untraceable poison for Longbottom?"

His godchild chuckled ruefully. A deep sigh exploded from somewhere deep within that elegant, narrow chest as his boy looked straight at him with the kind of seriousness that usually preceded the most unmovable of decisions.

"I'm in love with that bloody oaf, Godfather. I'm going to have to grow the balls to tell Father that he'll have to open the house to Augusta Longbottom again.

They haven't crossed a single word with each other since the woman turned his skin purple, during the wake they celebrated once it became obvious that Alice and Frank weren't going to recover..."

Severus remembered that occasion with the vividness of the person who had been forced to restrain Luc's wand hand. His friend had been beyond enraged by such harsh and _public_ rejection of the condolences that he'd been there to deliver. Pictures of the ghastly scene had graced the front covers of the Prophet for many weeks, and his friend's incensed reaction to every single one of them had been truly frightening.

Luc's cold-blooded retaliation had been as brutal as it'd been merciless. He'd personally started a very blatant vendetta against the old matriarch. One, so viciously obvious, that it destroyed both: the impeccable social standing of the Longbottom family and a huge chunk of it's fortune, within the space of three short months.

Anyone who dared to either _invite_ Augusta Longbottom to a party or continue to invest in her extensive portfolio after the incident at the wake, soon discovered that they had been blacklisted straight out of the Malfoy bandwagon.

It didn't matter how unfair anyone might have thought Luc's behaviour to be, or were anyone's sympathy with the whole issue could be found. It didn't matter that Augusta Longbottom had been grieving at the time, or that she'd been actually spookily correct in her accusations... the only thing that had mattered was that Luc's pride had been wounded beyond repair and he'd been unwilling to forgive. No one, absolutely no one with the inclination to prosper, had been able to _afford_ losing the Malfoy's favour.

"I was under the impression that he is already aware of your... attachment... to young Neville" He finally offered, wary of venturing into the discussion any further without ascertaining a few more details first.

Draco flopped into a chair with unusual gracelessness and then proceeded to muss up his pale hair in the most distressed manner, making Severus' eyes narrow with concern.

"Draco... It can't possibly be that bad, can it?"

Rueful laughter broke across his godson's lips and the sound grated on his nerves.

"Nev's gone bonkers because I haven't told my parents that we are serious about each other, and Father... Father thinks that I'm just shagging a gryffindor out of some sort of... late teenage _rebellion, _or something equally stupid_._ I'd say it's as bad as it can get, Godfather!"

He was absolutely _scandalized_ by the coarse language that his godchild had just used in his presence. His eyes bulged out of their sockets with distress and he cleared his drying throat uncomfortably.

"Isn't the ah... er... _shagging... _a pretty good indicator that you wish to commit to the man?. I'd have thought Luc would have gotten so large a hint by now."

Astonishment flashed clear as day within Draco's grey orbs.

"What?... No!. We are living in the twenty-first _century,_ Severus!. Shagging is... it's expected, isn't it?. It's what one does to relieve tension, you know?. Everybody does it all the time and no one turns a hair. Why would Father imagine that I'd... fallen, as hard as I actually have, just because I spread my legs open for Nev on a regular basis? I've done it for plenty of others."

Now his horror could not be concealed in any shape or form. His mouth opened in jaw-slackened disbelief and his face flamed with appalled embarrassment.

"Draco!"

The boy frowned. That delicate pale face twisted into a mask of shocked understanding and a wide-eyed gaze raked his form, from the top of his dark head to the tip of his old boots, with spluttering incredulity.

"You mean you still are...?. Are you are seriously keeping poor, smitten Potter on the dry and lonely road?"

A single blink after that truly invasive question hit his shocked ears a bark of uproarious laughter erupted from the lips of his one and only godson with so much force that it, literally, shook the boy's narrow frame as he guffawed with malicious mirth.

"That poor sod!... Has he been holding onto his own rope all along?. Then I don't get what in the bloody Hell can be making him whistle so much around here!."

He felt faint with unutterable discomfort. Outraged by the fact that his boy lacked the tact to abandon the topic at once, or at least stop treating it as some sort of... very amusing _abnormality!._

"I don't think there's reasonable cause for anyone to... _disdain_ proper _decorum,_ Draco. One has to be perfectly certain of one's feelings before engaging in the... _sharing_ of one's flesh. Otherwise you are destroying what should be a very special moment, with the memory of all of those whom you've _allowed_ the very same liberties, for no other reason than to assuage a perfectly ordinary lust!. Your Father wouldn't have had cause to be _misguided_ about your relationship with Longbottom, if you had practised some sort of _discrimination_ in the first place!"

Sudden sobriety returned, with a bang, to those pale features and he found himself on the receiving end of a wishful and shocked look.

"You are still a virgin... are you not, Godfather?. You've held out for love all this time... and one of these days you are going to give that moronic gryffindor the kind of treasure that I squandered on bloody Flinn-Fletchey."

He stiffened in annoyance.

"You are no one to talk. I thought you've grown to appreciate _gryffindors_ as much as I do."

Draco's relentless gaze became a softened pool of genuine affection as the boy pushed his chair closer.

"Look at you!... You are _in_ _love_ with that idiot. Are you not, old man?. You are defending him to me, as if I've offended him something fierce!. We are talking about sex here, about the _possibility_ of you finally partaking in the activity and the mention of the idea hasn't managed to force you out of the room yet... You've blushed bright red, and you are clearly uncomfortable, but your eyes are shining with hope. They look as if the very stars have come to live within them, Severus."

There was a moment of thoughtful silence as his godson looked at him with a peaceful kind of satisfaction. He didn't know _how_ to react to the unusual situation, to words such as these being directed towards himself for the very first time in his living memory.

"I'm glad to see that things are finally looking up for you, Godfather. I've never seen this particular expression on your face before now, and I must say it suits you. You look happy and hopeful. Vibrant. You look exactly like a man in the throes of first love should look like..."

His natural reticence to share any kind of information about his personal life tried to raise it's ugly head but he pushed it back down. Detachment had no place here, inside a room that held him alone with his godchild. If he could not confide in this boy then whom could he come to for... _advice_?.

He was crippled by his own disproportionate sense of proper decorum. By the fact that he saw Draco like a son and, therefore, felt utterly ridiculous talking about such intimate matters with him. Only... he hadn't yet managed to raise courage enough to go to Luc. Not over _this,_ at least...

"I... yes. We've grown very close recently. It's all so _disconcerting_ that I don't really know how to... react... to some of his requests."

Draco's fine blond eyebrows rose with obvious interest.

"What kind of requests?. Is he a kinky little bastard?. Has he...? Is he _pushing_ you for sex?"

His ears flamed and his eyes widened even further in alarmed denial.

"No!... NO. Sex hasn't come yet into the equation."

Draco seemed utterly flummoxed by that assertion.

"It hasn't?. Are you kidding?. Potter's reputation is worse than mine, Godfather!. He is an absolute whore of the first order!. I can't believe that you've managed to keep him interested, unless you are putting out some serious petting..."

He was hurt to his very depths by that reminder of Harry's astonishingly active sexual past. He'd known that it existed, of course. The Auror had been more than open with him about it, but... he was attempting, very hard indeed, to ignore it altogether.

Every now and then it became impossible to shy away from the knowledge, though. It... _ambushed..._ him in moments such as this one. Or while they were sitting together on the couch and he was regaled with the kind of kissing that could melt the skin off a man's bones. No one developed skills like those, unless they'd been around the block plenty of times...

"He says he is happy to wait. I don't believe that he has the time to... _procure_ alternative entertainment for himself. Between his work schedule and the amount of time we spend together he hardly has time enough to sleep, but..." His voice faltered at the very last second and the frightened look that appeared on his face managed to bring Draco out of his chair, and into a kneeling position at his feet, in the blink of an eye.

Pale long fingers wrapped around his cold ones with visible concern.

"What is it?"

"I... He is so young and... _athletic,_ Draco. He keeps telling me how happy he is with the way things are going between us, but... I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop!" His voice was gathering strength as he voiced the worrisome thoughts that had started to undermine his fragile confidence in the budding relationship that he was attempting to forge with Harry Potter.

Things were easier when they were together, sharing the same space, exchanging thoughts... Harry had a way of addressing his fears that usually put them to rest, at least for a while. But in the solitude of his own room he turned and turned every conversation they ever held around in his head. He analyzed every word they exchanged. Every touch and caress that Harry granted him. Every request for more that the boy had _failed_ to voice...

"You've said it yourself, Draco. I've found out what others think about his unending string of affairs. I _know_ that he hasn't stayed long with anyone, except for Peterssen. I've heard your father's explanation for that particular aberration, and it does make sense when I put it together with what Harry himself says, but..." His eyes closed in distressed, reluctant awareness of just how much he was revealing about truly private matters.

He was _flailing_ in a sea of heart-wrenching doubts and he lacked the confidence to discuss _this_ with his... his... with Harry himself. He knew not how to address his insecurities. Had no idea, at all, about how to find _relief_ for his deep fears. He wanted... No, he _needed_ reassurance and he felt that, maybe, someone a bit more experienced in these matters could shed some sort of insight into a situation that was simply... way above his head.

Draco's grey gaze was focused and patient. He seemed to understand instinctively just how difficult the whole situation was for him, and was very obviously attempting to give him room for thought.

A tender smile was grazing those soft lips and the hair that Severus still liked to stroke gently shone under the light, like a beacon made out of moonbeams.

"I'm no match for him, Draco. Either physically or emotionally. I have _nothing_ else to offer him but an old and ugly husk that can't possibly hold his attention for any reasonable length of time.

He... he kisses me as if he'd die without the touch, but... that's all he ever does. He's not gone any further than snogging the daylights out of me, and I... I've been wondering if he's lost interest already but doesn't quite know how to tell me..."

Draco burst out laughing uproariously and he recoiled, in absolute despair at having his very real fears treated with amusement. Hurt dark eyes turned away from his godchild and the boy's mirth died on the spot. Jarringly. Abruptly. Then elegant fingers curled around his thin wrist and tugged, insistently, until his gaze re-alighted on those pale and contrite features.

"I'm sorry that I laughed, Godfather. I truly am. But you have to understand that we are talking about _Potter_ here. That man has some serious _thing_ going for you. I _witnessed_ his obsession with your recovery, your memories, your reputation, your very life... day in and day out for four long years, and I'm telling you that our world will _disappear_ before that man _loses_ his _interest_ in you!"

His dark gaze relaxed minutely and his forehead furrowed in concentration as he wondered how to put his anxiety into words.

"Then _why_ doesn't he... _request..._ more?. What is it that I'm doing wrong, Draco?. How can it be possible that he's engaged in one-night stands with half of the dark haired population of wizarding Britain, but holds out on me for _months?. _Is inexperience really _that_ easy to recognize in a partner? Is it that off-putting to a man as... _well_ _versed..._ on the activity as Harry is?.

I've ordered a few books and have gone as far _as... looking_ through them, but... the pictures I saw were all so filthy, so _revolting_, that I haven't been able to bring myself to read the text."

Draco sighed, reaching out to grab Severus' flailing hands with both his own.

"I think you are mixing things up, Godfather. You've thrown your age difference, and his greater appeal to a wider range of men, into the same pot as his _willingness_ to go at a slower pace. Some of these things are not even part of this equation once we agree that Potter is actually in love with you.

He doesn't _care_ about your age, or how foul your temper is, or the fact that he is good-looking and popular but you aren't. He went past all those things _ages_ ago!. You are not trying to _lure_ him into a relationship. He is already _there._ He is already committed to you, at least in his head. Bloody Hell, Godfather, the whole god-dammed world _knows_ that he is crazy about _you!_.

His gaggle of Weasleys accepted it a million years ago, his goody-goody sidekicks have put some serious elbow-grease into finding ways to either bring you back or clear your legal status, just because they _know_ how important you are to him. He has bent himself backwards over you!. How can't you see that his life is ready to welcome you into it with open arms?. He moved straight back here, at the first chance you gave him, because he can't bloody _live _away from you!. "

He was shocked by the fierceness of the joy that he experienced then. Overwhelmed by the sheer sense of relieved _elation_ that invaded his every fibre and left him feeling weak with a dazzled kind of warmth. He found himself responding to his godchild's claims with the kind of deeply instinctive contentment that he experienced only among his potions. Or Draco himself...

He knew then, with the very same kind of unshakable awareness with which he could sense the exact point when Veritaseurm turned, from merely a mix of ingredients into the perfect distillation of truthfulness made liquid, that he'd fallen hard for Potter. Hard enough to have abandoned self-restraint. Hard enough to be sitting here, literally squirming with embarrassment, as he attempted to understand exactly what was going on with their relationship.

"Then _why_ doesn't he... _act_, Draco?" He repeated that one question with the doggedness of those who can't really understand and his boy patted him softly on the knee.

"Because he is a gryffindor, of course!. Acting idiotically comes with the territory, apparently. He went ahead and rushed you when he should have _waited_. And _now_ that he should move forwards he is stalling like a moronic snail, because he _knows_ that he messed things up already. He was so worried when you came back to Hogwarts that your first few days here became absolute Hell for everyone...

He holed up with Granger and Weasley and moped, non-stop, about how he'd scared you off with all his groping and his avowals of love. It was even worse after Father fire-called him and screamed into his face for well over an hour, accusing him of being stupid enough to spook you straight into a retreat with his rushed declaration. I've never seen boy-wonder so dejected. Not even when you were still in your coma. It was _horrible_. It really was!. I believe that he might have learned his lesson a bit too well, at long last, and now is really erring on the side of _overcompensation._"

Silence spread between them as Severus attempted to digest that point of view. He could not actually believe that the answer could be so _simple._ He was utterly mortified that he hadn't even contemplated something along those lines on his own.

Then another thought hit him and he stiffened. Apprehensive dismay brought a veritable miasma of stricken panic to his already ashen visage.

"I... I... Does this mean that he... Is he _waiting_ for _me_ to make the first move?"

Draco smiled very gently and a light that was soft and reassuring entered his pale grey eyes.

"You don't have to be perfect about it, you know?. You don't even need to read those books of yours, if you find them distasteful. I have the feeling that you'll need a more gentle introduction to... intimacy... than most people, Godfather. He'll be thrilled enough with some subtle indication that you are ready to move things along."

His distress was blatantly obvious when he croaked out in alarm:

"Subtle?. He is a _gryffindor_, Draco!"

"Then _talk_ to him. That always works with Nev. These blokes are _suckers_ for a good little-lost-me-needs-your-help sort of spiel. Does he _know_ that you are... still _pure_?. _That_ could have messed with his silly goody-goody head something fierce!"

Severus almost choked on his own saliva at the question. He could not exactly remember the issue having popped into an actual conversation with Harry lately, although he recalled having gone as far as _implying_ that he'd been touched, back when he'd been mad with the little brat after that first, ill-timed kiss they'd shared...

"I think he suspects that I haven't been particularly active sexually, but... I believe that he hasn't really _guessed_ the true extent of my actual lack of experience."

Draco gaped. Those pale features showed crystal-clear worry as the boy stared unblinkingly straight at him.

"You've got to tell him. He can't _take_ your virginity away, without knowing it, or he'll mess things big time for the both of you!. He'll never forgive himself if that happens, Godfather."

The very idea of _confessing_ such a thing filled him with nausea. He didn't want _anyone_ to know just how... dismally _unappealing_ he'd been considered by others throughout his life. He didn't want to have to admit something so _humiliating_ to any living soul, least of all to Harry...

"I... How could I _explain_ such thing, Draco? It's so _embarrassing_... He'll think I'm a freak."

Draco's fingers tightened around his bony knee and his voice was earnest as he refuted that idea with a passionate insistence:

"He _won't_. He'll love it!. He'll feel all proud and elated _knowing_ that he'll be the one to introduce you to the world of full blown sexuality, Godfather.

He'll treasure the knowledge like a gift and treat the moment with the care that it deserves. You'll _both _get to cherish it forever... I _wish_ that I had waited. I wish I hadn't been the third lover Neville took to his bed. I'm never going to have the chance to relish the fact that he has only ever been mine. _That_ can't be bought with all the gold in Gringotts!. That is a jewel of an honour and he _has_ to _know_ that you are giving it to him."

Silence settled between them as those words sank, like heavy rocks, into his psyche. His heart clenched with indecision and his eyes fluttered closed. He felt tired and confused. He felt wrecked. His mind buzzed with a thousand conflicting ideas and desires. He knew not what he would do, and he needed time to ponder about these things that he'd never even considered before.

"As enlightening as this truly uncomfortable conversation did turn out to be, I was meaning to ask your advice about something completely different, Draco..."

His boy frowned. An expectant kind of light entered those aristocratic features as a second turned slowly into another but not a single word further was volunteered.

"Well?"

"Harry is _insisting_ that we should consider spending the Easter vacation together. He has already secured Minnie's agreement to remain at the school and look after the few students who won't return home for the fortnight, just in case I decide to go with him. He... he's got some cottage that he owns, somewhere in Wales. His little place by the sea, he calls it. He has invited me to spend the holidays with him there, and I... I don't _know_ what to do. It sounds so... _improper..._ to visit his home like that, now that we are _involved_. He might think that I _want_ to... you know."

Draco blinked in bewilderment.

"Weren't we just talking about how much you want him to jump your bones? I'd have thought this would be the perfect opportunity!"

He looked down at his feet, potion-tainted fingers writhing against one another as he twirled them around with nervous anxiety.

"What would everyone else think of me, Draco?. They'll... they'll assume that I... That _we _have gone there to... _indulge._.. in such things. They'll think me a shameless trollop!. Unfit to teach young, impressionable, children...

"You are a forty year old virgin, for Merlin's sake!. How could _anybody_ think you a _trollop_?. I'll hex anyone who even looks at you funny, if you want, Godfather. But I promise you: no one will turn a hair at the two of you taking a short vacation together"

Worried dark eyes settled over earnest grey irises with the kind of uncharacteristic indecision that obviously broke the younger man's heart. He could understand that his boy had never known this side of him. He'd always tried to seem so strong, so... certain... of his every decision in front of Draco that he could certainly imagine the kind of shock he was delivering right now. He couldn't help himself, though. Not in this matter. He felt so ill-equipped to deal with any of it that he was, literally, drowning in a sea of frightened confusion.

"If I go... I won't be able to turn around. I'll be irrevocably _committed. _I don't think that I can give myself to him and then... forget him."

Searching pale eyes looked into his own thoughtfully.

"Could you turn around now, though?. Could you walk out on him, right at this second, and remain whole?"

Draco's quiet non-answer brought home a powerful realization that he hadn't yet contemplated. He'd been so busy freaking out about the future that he hadn't actually stopped to analyze the here and now.

His life revolved around the school and the auror, to such extent, that he'd barely visited Luc in the last month. He felt _odd_ when Harry spent the evening away from the castle, gone to have dinner with his friends or with the Weasleys...

He rattled around his office for hours on end, like a ghost chained to the realm of the living, whenever the boy was absent from their usual evening get-together. He'd started to develop a routine around the demands of their very different schedules that had no meaning without the child there to share it...

"No. I don't think I can. I'll shatter like glass, Draco. I think it might actually destroy me..."

"Then your answer is quite obvious. Is it not?. You accept this invitation and you tell him.

Tell him that you love him, and that he will be your first. The first to love you back. The first to touch your skin. The first to make you happy... You'll leave here a half-man and return to me finally whole, Godfather. Harry will keep you safe. He will treasure you. He will give you all the things that you deserve and not a single one of us, not _one_, will begrudge you your happiness or think any less of you."

He was touched to the heart by those quiet words. He was shocked by how much _peace_ they actually brought him. He was _grateful_ beyond words by the fact that they had been pronounced in the first place. He was _humbled_ by the wave of deep affection that was surging throughout his being as he looked at this boy whom he loved like the son he'd never had.

"I love you, Draco Malfoy. I love you with all of my heart. I might not tell you this often. But it's true, nevertheless. I'd forfeit my own life to save yours without thinking twice about it."

Pale young features smiled brightly at him and his beautiful godchild rose on his knees to kiss his cold cheek softly.

"I'll be happier if you live your life to the full for me, instead, Godfather. No matter how many times you miss the chance to tell me that I'm perfect, I happen to know that you do think it anyway. I love you too, you know?. For what that's worth, I might even confess that I'll continue to love you even after you bond with that blind nightmare, and force me to call my childhood nemesis _Uncle_ _Harry_..."

They both burst into hysterical giggles at those words and the moment spun gently around itself, coiling tightly within their hearts, within their memories, until it became one more of those simple instants of perfect communion that united them. One more of those shared moments that linked them together in paternal devotion. They were alone and they were together. They understood one another. They loved each other with a limpid sort of simplicity. They would be there for one another no matter who else came or went. No matter who stayed...

TBC...


	40. Chapter 40

_**THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 40**_

The constant giggling in the corridors had been getting on his nerves all morning long. He'd woken up already out of sorts, due to another sleepless night riddled with his constant worrying about whether he should really accept Harry's invitation to go on vacation together or delay the inevitable for a little while longer. He was driving himself mad over the matter and the fact that he hadn't managed to gather enough courage to speak about his lack of experience with the auror bothered him no end.

Add to that the stressful experience of having to plan and then put into motion all sorts of preparations to accommodate his idea of having a Valentine-day celebration based on the traditional Magical-Jousting-Games of folkloric pureblood tradition and the last few days had become an absolute nightmare.

He'd been up before sunrise, helping Fillius with the charms that would sustain the formal jousting arena that they had decided to erect in the middle of the Quidditch pitch for the day. There was going to be Magical Dueling and Threstal jousting. Matches of Magical Levitation and Transfiguration challenges. There was going to be an enchanted maze, riddled with all sorts of traps and Magical distractions. They were planing to install an old fashioned potions-peddling stand where the children were being encouraged to brew small batches of relatively simple physical enhancers and mild make-up potions in order to sell them for a small profit. There'd be also a formal parade and a knight's ball just before sunset... The plan had been incredibly well received, for some reason. He couldn't really understand how it was possible that, by telling the student body that they'd be allowed to wear a token from their chosen and even dedicate their victories to them, in conformity with the ancient rules of formal courting challenges, he'd managed to achieve the seemingly impossible feat of having filled the library with hard-working students for days on end. Everyone had been busy cramming on charms and shielding spells, on potions and transfiguration, on defensive wand motions and hexes, in order to do their best during the games. It was just... _incredible._ He'd started to have a very good feeling about N.E.W.T results this year and had spent the last two days in a constant estate of exhilarated anxiety. Now if he could turn this event into a success he could bring it back each year as a Valentine's day tradition and _that'll_ give the brats an extra reason to review properly for their tests a mere month before their finals...

He'd been helping Longbottom enhance a hedge of Light-Tangling-Knotgrass for the Magical Maze when Luc's owl had arrived, bearing the worst possible news.

Now he paced his office like a trapped tiger while his stomach churned with unbearable dread. He hated this. He hated it!. He couldn't believe that Edwardson had finally bowed to Greysone Rogers' demands and accepted to pressure him into taking a minimum of two apprentices for the benefit of both, the school and the Potioneers Guild.

The members of the board had been called to an urgent meeting that was going to take place just after noon. Luc had warned him that the meeting could become a political nightmare, as most board members were determined to maintain Hogwarts' independence from all other educational bodies and that included the British Mastery Guild of Potioneers and Alchemists that Rogers' headed. None of them could dismiss the sheer amount of revenue that having him accept just a couple of the crazy offers he'd received could bring into the school's coffers, though, and there was more than a fair amount of dissension among the board's members over the issue. There was a good chance that he'd end up being corralled into surrendering to the majority's desire for greater economical freedom.

His heart pounded with the horrible certainty that he was going to end up being _pushed_ into doing something that he'd very vocally refused to return to.

These old men weren't going to stop demanding more and more from him at every step. They had already fallen into the trap of abusing their power to commit a veritable injustice against him. They'd seemed to have forgotten how they'd _dared_ to ratify his _illegally_ obtained position as Headmaster. One that he'd never wanted nor had bothered to apply for, in the first place. One that he'd been _forced_ to accept on the Dark Lord's command. He'd never agreed to stay on after the war was over. He hadn't even _imagined_ he'd survive. He'd been bloody _unconscious_ for four years and none of that had mattered to anyone... They'd instated him in absentia and then kept him at the helm, when he wasn't even _healthy_ enough to cope with the responsibility of assuming the demands of a working school, _any_ working school, let alone one the size of Hogwarts!.

No matter what Albus' manipulating deals had been geared to achieve, the truth of the matter was that he'd never _agreed_ to shackle himself to this wonderful institution, although he loved his new role with all his heart. Now they were preparing to _push_ him even further. Having gone already way above all limits of what could be reasonably demanded of him, they were readying themselves to start blackmailing him back into teaching. They were trying to... _manhandle..._ him into accepting the sort of chore that he felt truly unprepared to go back to. He'd been an unsuccessful, highly unpopular professor for twenty years. He _despised_ the activity with a passion that had remained unmatched throughout his life. He wasn't _willing_ to repeat that miserable experience. Not now that he didn't have to, but... if he didn't agree to do it, they might ran him out of Hogwarts and then... what?. He'd grown to _love_ the job. He genuinely enjoyed it. He believed that he could make a difference here and he wasn't ready to be pushed away. Not yet...

His heart froze within his chest and his stomach churned with the bitterness of knowing himself trapped once again. He'd gone back to being the puppet of merciless old men. Back to being _pushed_ and _pulled _for the purpose of achieving someone else's purposes. He was back to being... utterly _powerless._

His eyes filled with dark shadows and he stopped beside the window, looking down towards the cheerful champion's banners that the children had began to hang all around the jousting arena. He felt cold down to his bones. He felt _shattered_ with sorrow. He adored the challenge of coming up with new ideas to force the students into further learning, even if they assumed that they were only celebrating lover's day. There was so much still left for him to do here...

"Severus?"

He'd been so lost in his own thoughts that he hadn't heard the floo and now turned around, startled. His shocked eyes settled on the enormous bouquet of red roses that Harry was carrying in his right hand and his throat closed with emotion.

"Malfoy sent me an owl and I... I had to come, see how you were doing. Here. I brought these for you. Happy Valentine's day, my love..."

He felt strange right at that second. He couldn't think of a single thing to say in reaction to the fact that Harry... Harry was right _here_ when he needed him the most. He'd come all the way to Hogwarts to check on him. He was _here_ in the middle of a working morning. In _this_ day, of all days, carrying the most romantic of flowers for his benefit...

"Oh, Harry!..."

He'd walked straight into the boy's startled arms without bothering to think such action through and he found himself being immediately welcomed against that strong chest without a single hesitation. His forehead found shelter on the auror's shoulder and he felt something very close to comfort for the first time since he'd received Luc's blasted owl.

He could smell the heady aroma of the roses as the gryffindor swung his arms around his narrow frame and held him tightly. A warm palm traced a soothing path up and down the knobby line of his spinal chord and he allowed himself the simple pleasure of just... being. He knew that he _needed_ the comfort. There was no point in trying to portray himself as a strong and distant man, one who'd be perfectly able to cope with the awful prospect of going back to teaching. He wasn't that man anyway, and trying to fake that he was would end up with him losing this moment forever. He wasn't going to deny the fact that he felt overwhelmed and under attack. He wasn't going to even attempt _trying_ to convince Harry that he didn't need help. That would lead them both nowhere and would result in him losing all the comfort that the boy had come to deliver and he actually _wanted _to receive.

The thought brought with it a flash of sudden clarity and he understood for the first time that he'd been doing just that every time he doubted the wisdom of accompanying the brat in his short Holiday. He was trying to... _resist_ having to explain how very vulnerable he felt about the prospect of becoming even more intimate. He was trying to save himself the embarrassment of confessing his virginity to Harry and portraying himself as someone who simply... _lacked_ the courage to forge ahead and commit to their relationship completely. He could not continue doing that any longer, it'd leave them both stranded in a never-ending limbo. They could not _become_ snared in this stressful vacuum forever. One or the other would feel the need to move on eventually and then _what_?... Was he really willing to lose the chance of becoming even closer to his partner? Was he so intent on saving face that he actually found value in the idea of continuing with this incessant _dithering?_ How many more precious moments of _this_ kind of togetherness was he willing to give up because of fear?... How much _longer_ was he going to remain a slave to self-shame? How much longer would he live his life in _this_ loop of denial? How many more weeks, or months, of his future was he willing to _waste_ on uncertainty?.

"I'm going to Wales with you, Harry" He spoke quietly into the auror's shoulder and witnessed the boy's surprised response almost at once. The muscle under his head shifted, bringing Harry's collarbone into a half a twitch of startled reaction. The hand that had been so busy, tracing soothing patterns on his back a mere second ago, was raised towards the nape of his neck in a gesture that silently demanded for him to lift his head. Obeying that unspoken request didn't feel forced at all. It felt more like a concession that he'd granted out of simple generosity and, when their eyes finally met, he could have drowned in the blinding beauty of the sheer emerald fire that was trying to read his very soul.

"Are you sure? I don't want you to feel pressured into coming. I need you to be certain, Severus. We can stay right here for the holiday if you really want to play things safe"

His smile was rather wobbly but he tried to offer it genuinely. He stepped away and watched Harry's arms drop off him with flattering reluctance. The beautiful bouquet of crimson colored roses that the auror still held caught his attention once more and he nodded towards it.

"I believe you have no trouble with introducing your own idea of romance into these walls, Mr Potter. I don't think staying back will keep me _safer_"

Harry laughed, offering him the flowers with a flourish.

"This old twigs? I just got them from a stand on my way in. Couldn't let my own beloved feel forgotten on this day, could I?"

He shook his head in wonder, a soft smile curved his lips as he lifted potion-tainted fingertips to touch the silky-soft petals with a sort of bashful longing.

"I didn't think of getting you flowers. I was planing to dance with you in the firelight of my office. Dull, huh?. I'm afraid that I'm not very good with the kind of bold and generous gestures that you so effortlessly excel at. I'm rather useless at romance."

"Don't be so whiny, Severus. A quiet session of gentle dancing around your office sounds like a perfect way to unwind after the madness that awaits all of us with this afternoon's tournament"

"Whiny? I thought I'm one of the bravest men you know, Potter. Have you changed your mind about that already?"

Harry's hand rose to graze against his chin, tracing the sharp lines of his closely shaved jaw with careful tenderness and it was clear to him that his auror had, once again, read him like a book.

"No. I haven't changed my mind and I'm not planning to do so in this lifetime, either. I've been told that my stubbornness could drive a stone statue to drink and I'm willing to put that theory to the test with regards to _this_ matter. You'll tire of me before I do, Severus. You'll cast me away before I leave you. I'll stay right here until you force me to go and, even then, I'll still belong to you until my lungs take their very last breath. Do you understand me?"

His eyes burned with the effort of not blinking. He'd been rendered speechless by the boy's beautiful words. His heart ached with a fierce longing to find something equally exquisite to gift him in return but his brain had switched off and he... he couldn't find a single sentence that could even begin to describe the tangled web of emotions and desires that were running through his head, setting his heart on fire.

"I don't think I'm capable of casting you away, Harry" He stammered, in flustered response, and promptly managed to blush to the tips of his ears like a bloody schoolgirl.

Harry smiled at him brightly, following the heated path of his blush across his cheekbones with a rough-tipped thumb.

"That's perfect, my love. Just _perfect_!. There's no need for all this shyness between us. Look at me, Severus!. We'll have dinner here and dance, just like you planned. We'll stop the declarations now, if they make you this uncomfortable, and enjoy each other's company with the understanding that _this_ day belongs to us, too. I'm in love and you are right here: perfectly healthy and conscious for the first time in four years. I wanted to bring you flowers, OK?. You don't have to say you love me back. You don't have to try so hard to fit in with the spirit of this day. You will tell me exactly how you feel when you are ready to do so, and that'll make that wonderful moment even more special. I need you to tell me how you feel because you want to, not because you think I wish to hear it. Or because you think that I deserve it. Definitely not because is Valentine's day...

But I want to have the evening that you'd planned. I want to dance with you by the firelight in your office and listen to soft music in your arms. I wonder what words would convince you to sing softly against my ear... I'd love to feel the magic of having you croon a ballad while you hold me, as tightly as possible, against your heart"

He blushed even more furiously and took an instinctive step backwards.

"What?. No!. I suck at singing, Harry."

Uproarious laughter exploded in the next second from the smiling lips of the blasted brat and he floundered with the horrified sense of sheer embarrassment that flooded him from head to toes.

"You don't have to sing, you know?. I just meant that I'd love to hear you, that's all. Having that voice of yours singing rough-toned verses against my ear is the one thing that could have me melting in a puddle of soppy goo within a minute, Severus. You've got to lighten up, you know? Romance doesn't have to be _perfect,_ it just needs to be _heartfelt"_

He didn't know what to answer to that, either, so he took the coward's way out and focused on the roses.

"They are beautiful. I should find a vase for them before they get spoiled."

With a quick flick of his wand he conjured a tall crystal container and filled it with water. An instant later his flowers lay within it and he set the whole thing atop his desk with a deep sigh. He stood and stared at them, feeling inexplicably saddened and his shoulders sagged with dejection as he brought a trembling hand to rub his own forehead soothingly.

"Severus?"

Harry's hand came to rest on his tense shoulder and he managed to relax ever so slightly under the contact. His eyes closed. His pulse was thundering anxiously against the fragile skin of his wrists and he felt, literally, overwhelmed by the crazed roller-coaster of emotions that he'd been forced to confront in such a short span of time. The moment stretched into pained silence and he remained nailed to the spot, like a brainless, dazed, lump. He couldn't _find_ the strength to move away, but now he was too nervous about the prospect of their evening dancing together to lean back and find refuge, once again, within the protective cocoon of the auror's arms.

A callused palm followed the tense line of his right shoulder, all the way down that thin limb towards his wrist and then it retraced it's path, rubbing the whole arm soothingly twice more before curling decisively around his bony wrist in a clear attempt to get him to turn around.

"Is this about the tournament, the board meeting, or about _us_, Severus? Surely you realize that nothing is as dire as your attitude implies, don't you?. You are going to be _fine_, you know? The grounds are looking great and there's not much else that you can do past providing the kids with proper food, a reasonable level of safety and plenty of music. _This_ was a great idea, I've heard nothing but praise towards you on my way in and it's been like that every day since you announced the games."

Some of his tension left him then and he allowed himself to be turned around, forced himself to look straight into those worried emerald eyes that were studying him so intently.

"The children are happy. They've all worked so hard for this and I... I never imagined that I'd enjoy being Hogwarts Headmaster this much, Harry. I think I'm beginning to understand Albus at last. It's such a privilege to be allowed to come up with all these ideas. _Everything_ excites them into doing better. Everything interests them and allows them to think laterally. I was always so focused on my own dogged determination to fill their heads with potions that I totally forgot the bigger picture. I just... everything would be _simpler_ if only the board would step aside and let me _do_ the bloody work!. Now they'll force me to teach some pompous idiots, who have decided that they need to have my name attached to their mastery title, in order to earn the privilege of continuing doing _this._ It's a nightmare. Just a _nightmare._ I wish Edwardson had the balls to send Rogers' packing, but I guess the lure of all those galleons was too much even for him."

Harry looked at him pointedly, gaze dangerously narrowed into an expression of outraged displeasure.

"Did they really said you've got to _earn_ the privilege of continuing doing _this_ _job_? Are they crazy? You are the best thing that has happened to this school in years!. They can't be serious... They've got to be _bluffing_, Severus. They are trying to pressure you into doing what they want and you are _falling_ for their _lies._ What in the bloody Hell did Malfoy tell you in his letter?"

He shrugged himself free of the boy's loose hold and walked around his desk before plopping atop his chair with despairing dejection.

"He said they've called for an urgent meeting to discuss the issue and that Rogers will be present. Then he attached a copy of Edwardson's note to him for my perusal and signed off with the warning to come properly prepared"

Harry sat across from him, looking pensive.

"Did Malfoy clarify if he's going to back you up?"

He could not understand the odd question and his eyebrows came together in a truly puzzled frown.

"Back me up? You make it sound as if I'm going to war."

Green eyes looked straight at him in a blatantly open challenge.

"Aren't you? These old bastards are messing with you, Severus!. They do nothing all year round except coming to these meetings and sign checks. What do they really _know_ about the curriculum that you teach or how fresh all potions ingredients have to be for them to be really effective in a class? What do they _know_ about the new sport's program that you created or your Internet network? What do they know about motivating children to work better? They know nothing about it. _Nothing_!.

This isn't even about the school, this is just about money. Money that they don't need, by the way, because we all know that Hogwarts' funds are guaranteed by the Ministry and they'll never run out. So... If Edwardson has bowed to Rogers' pressure then there must be some other members of the board giving him a hard time about this. I _know_ that wily old bastard and I'd bet my whole year's salary on the point that he is praying for you to just... _refuse!._ I'd go as far as to assume that's _why_ he send this _awful_ little letter to Lucius Malfoy, of all people. He must have been counting on your friend's loyalty to you. He wanted Malfoy to warn you. He gave the both of you plenty of time when he scheduled this meeting so late in the morning.._._ _Why_ can't you _see_ this?. It's all so simple!. You three are being so _slytherin_ about this that you are all _failing_ to communicate effectively with one another. If someone else is pressuring Edwardson to bring this to a vote, then his hands are going to be tied, unless you object."

He stared at the letter that Harry had picked up from his desk with widened dark eyes. He'd never thought about any of it in quite those terms, but... yes. _That_ did make sense, only...

"How can I object? They'll laugh me out of the room!. They'll fire me on the spot and then I'll be forced to _leave_. I won't be allowed to stay and do whatever I can for the children anymore. I don't _want_ to be cast away from Hogwarts. Not now. There's so much I still want to do here that I..."

Harry's chair screeched loudly when the boy pushed it aside to come and kneel beside him. Gentle hands curled around him and a pair of softened green eyes pinned him to the spot with a fierce sort of intensity.

"You are so blind... None of them will have the balls to fire you. None of them will be allowed to, anyway. Edwardson is waiting for _you_ to tie his hands down, Severus!. Someone _wants_ him to put Rogers' interests before _yours _and they'll do exactly that, if you let them. But if you refuse to bow down, then it'll be a choice between keeping the Headmaster of Hogwarts happy enough for him _not_ to walk out on the school and the greedy machinations of the head of the Potioneers Guild. _That_ choice will be a no-brainer for Edwardson, I promise you. He'll happily support you and so will Malfoy. With nothing else to gain, and everything to lose, half the board will follow the example of those two anyway."

"Rogers has a lot of political clout, Harry. He belongs to one of the more prominent pureblood lines there are. Two of his brothers are members of the Wizengamot and the amount of power that he can wield against me can crush me out of his path like a small bug"

There was a tinge of heartbroken pity in Harry's limpid gaze. The boy held tightly on to his hands and pressed on them in a silent, reassuring gesture that felt almost... fervent.

"You've got to believe in yourself, Severus. Don't you see that no one will treat you with respect, unless you force them to?. No one has the power of making you do anything, unless you let them!. The war is over, my love. There are no more life-or-death decisions to make anymore. There's no more need to decide that keeping you safe isn't worth the risk of losing the kind of information that you helped us collect. There's not a man alive today who deserves the great honor of having _you_ bow before him. You've got to trust me on this!.

There's nothing more to this situation than a simple clash of wills. Rogers' _knows_ you. He believes that he can make you back down, but he doesn't have _more_ power than you do. Nor does he have more supporters. He doesn't have a single weapon in is possession that he could possibly use to force you into submission. Not _against_ your will. His only advantage is your own lack of self-confidence. Your instinctive assumption that you'll be the one left out in the dust, if it comes to a confrontation. He isn't _worthier_ than you. Not in any way!. Definitely not within these walls. _This_ is only about _money_ and if you go down to that meeting and force those bastards to make this about _yourself,_ then there's not a single member of the board who'd dare to try pushing your back against the wall."

He pondered that assessment for a long second. Dark eyes widened with the kind of shocked understanding that he would have never _dared_ to contemplate, if the gryffindor hadn't come right out and pointed him in that direction.

"Will it really be so easy? What if you are wrong, Harry? What if I risk it and end up loosing my position here anyway? What if there's some _other_ issue that we aren't seeing?..."

"Then you risk, and you lose, and you take it in your stride. You _walk_ _away_ on your on terms, unless they are willing to let you stay also on your terms. If you bow before them _now_, you'll be bowing for them constantly in the future. You would have lost the board's respect and their willingness to _try_ keeping you happy. You'd have shown them that they have the upper hand here and no one will give you what you need. Not when you need it, anyway. They'll make you beg for everything just because they can. Powerful men are all the same underneath their exquisitely tailored robes. Instinctive ruthlessness is their unanimous response to perceived weakness. You _don't_ _have to_ become anyone's slave for the sake of the school. You don't have to beg anyone to do _this_ job. You are Severus Snape, War Hero, famous spy, acclaimed potions master!. You don't _need_ anyone's _permission_ to live your life the way you want to live it, and anyone who even tries to force you into believing anything else should be told to go to Hell, Severus!"

His hands shook as he untangled them from the boy's. His pale digits rose towards his own head and he ran them through his black hair in the kind of nervous gesture that he rarely allowed himself to indulge in while in another's presence.

His eyes closed and he breathed in and out, trying to find some sort of calm to think this through. Trying to see clear to his own thoughts under the myriad of tangled ideas that the gryffindor had just bombarded his mind with. Did he really _believe_ that he could confront Rogers openly about the mentorship applications and come out the winner? He couldn't really begin to imagine how nasty that particular battle could become. It'd be so much easier to just... give in, but...

He'd been pushed around all of his life. He'd been a follower and a victim of relentless bullying in one way or another. He'd learned to give up, whenever someone stronger put him under pressure, and he'd done it at every stage of his childhood and adolescence. He'd done it right until the very second when he found himself dying on the floor of that Merlin-forsaken shack...

He didn't _want_ to be a victim any longer. Was he willing then to reach out for freedom, even if it cost him Hogwarts?. His eyelids trembled open and he looked up at the walls that surrounded him. The former Headmasters' portraits shone in dustless splendor under the delicate morning sunlight and he knew that, even if he left the school tonight, he had still been at the helm for long enough to walk away leaving something behind him. His Internet web was up and running. His sports program would be difficult to scrap and his new reward-system... they might even keep that, if the children protested hard enough.

He might not have done _everything_ he wanted but he'd done _something_. He wouldn't have been able to achieve any of that if the board had constantly defied him. If they'd shackled his every initiative to a long list of school rules, or historic references, or whatever else they had cared to drum up. No. He wouldn't be properly able to help the school, unless he held every rein within his hand. Hogwarts deserved all or nothing. It deserved a Headmaster who was willing to risk _everything_ for it. It deserved to have a man of courage at its helm, and if he couldn't find enough bravery to defy a single, greedy man, then... what were the chances that he would be strong enough to defend the school's interest when it's enemy was something far more dangerous?. Albus... Albus wouldn't have allowed _anyone_ to mess with him this badly...

He looked down once more and his grateful ebony gaze settled over Harry. A soft smile curved his lips and he whispered in a choked promise:

"Whatever happens this afternoon, brat, I'll sing you a bloody song for Valentine's. When we dance in the firelight tonight, I'll tell you exactly how you've taught me to be stronger. To dream boldly. To be... _more _than I've ever been before. I'm going down to the conference room now, but... I'm coming back to quick-start _my_ _games_ and, after that, we'll have our own lovers' day celebration. We'll dance until we are too tired to blink and then I'll sing for you, Harry."

A bright smile broke across the young features of his gryffindor and those emerald eyes blinked with a sort of dazed fire.

"Really? I think I'll end up fainting, like one of your crazy fans, if you do that for real"

Laughter bubbled up in his throat and burst forth from his curving lips when he decided that he couldn't really be bothered to suppress it.

"You'll faint? Seriously? The Saviour himself is going to swoon at my feet for a mere song?"

Harry came to a standing position and threw his arms exuberantly around in a wide arch. He turned on the spot surveying the whole office through half-lidded green eyes.

"This will be our first Valentine's day together and we are going to spend it dancing by ourselves before we end it with a song that _you_ are singing for me. Yes, I'm willing to swoon for that, Headmaster. I'll go buy you more roses so that we can spread their petals on the floor and dance barefooted over them. I want this place to smell like a dammed garden when you hold me in your arms and sing me a ballad..."

His eyes darted towards the Tempus panel that hung just beside his door and he realized that he didn't have much time, if he wanted to reach the conference room early enough to exchange a private word with Luc.

"Harry, I have to go..."

He rose from his own chair hastily and started to cross the office towards the entrance, mind already buzzing with a million and one variations of the sentence 'piss off' that he planed to hurl at Rogers' greedy face. A strong hand curled around his wrist as he passed the auror and he was forcibly detained for a second.

"I know how much you love this school, Severus. I know how willingly you'll sacrifice yourself for it. Rogers probably knows that too, but... there are times when letting something you love go, in order to get it later on your own terms, will make you happier than compromising. I could have decided not to take that dose of Felix-Felicis... I could have just gone to visit you and allowed Draco to bring you home, like he wanted. I could have mooned over you for years and you might have, eventually, decided to stop hating me. But we wouldn't be here, about to share valentine's day as a couple, if I had taken any of those roads. You have to fight for your own terms, my love. Sometimes that's the only way forwards..."

He brought his free hand up and curled it against the warm skin at the nape of Harry's neck, bringing that messy head closer to himself. His tall frame inclined down very slowly and the silky texture of the auror's hair tickled the very tip of his long nose when he closed his own eyes and pressed a single kiss against the boy's forehead.

"I believe that you are right, for once. How is that for a shock to the senses?"

A soft gasp fluttered against the puckered skin on his neck, directly where the scar left by Nagini's bite marred his pale flesh and he shivered in reaction. A second later Harry's head jerked slightly away and a pair of narrowed green eyes searched his own.

"Are you sure?... Then I think I'll let you go kick as much old butt as necessary. But you must come back straight to my rooms so that I may go down to the tournament accompanied by the handsomest Headmaster this school has ever seen. Then we'll dance and you'll sing and _everything_ will be perfect"

He smiled despite the thick knot that was tightening his throat, attempting to force him into silence. His lips curved up slightly and his ebony black eyes warmed with undisguised affection. He pressed Harry's shoulder lightly before letting it go.

"Yes. I believe that everything will be perfect, Harry Potter. Even If I end up singing like old Binns on Hallows Eve you'll smile and look at me dreamily, won't you?. You'll have to, you foolish gryffindor. You should have kept mum about this and never, ever, implied that romance doesn't have to be perfect. Now you'll have to live with my attempts to take refuge behind the idea that it only really needs to be... _heartfelt"_

TBC...


	41. Chapter 41

_**The voice under all silences. Chapter 41**_

The Northern coast of Wales boasts a dismal tendency to welcome chilly winds and heavy rain during mid-April. Entire summer-oriented vacation villages, and every business associated with them, are almost totally deserted at this time of the year and the quirky, old-fashioned, communities that dot the whole of the coast greet most out-of-season visitors with a dismaying sense of forlorn emptiness.

Although he could definitely appreciate the raw appeal of the rugged coastal outline that Harry's home had been built to overlook the constant freezing rain and thick fog diminished his enjoyment of it greatly. Add to that the fact that he'd been _fretting_ about this vacation for well over a month now and the result was a jumpy headmaster who seemed to be walking on eggshells every single second of the day.

After his conversation with Draco, he'd found himself worrying about how to explain his... _purity..._ to Harry. Despite his godson's reassurances he still wasn't so convinced that his lack of sexual experience would be received in as positive a light as Draco had suggested. He didn't _want_ to sound pathetic, when he finally confessed, but he couldn't possibly imply that he'd remained chaste out of anything other than lack of... opportunity.

He'd never felt so frightened of a single conversation before, and it showed in his constant distraction. In his jumpy, snappy attitude. In the fact that he'd attempted, at least thrice, to voice aloud this particular confession but had ended up chickening out at the last second, to Harry's obvious bewilderment.

The auror was looking at him now from the corner of his eye. He had settled on the couch with a Quidditch magazine, apparently enjoying the warmth coming off the hearth as the late evening gave way to the night itself. Severus was attempting to fake being engrossed within the dry facts of the latest Potion's Quarterly but, so far, he was mostly certain that he was failing in this self-appointed task abysmally.

They had arrived two days ago and the experience had been both, soothing and incredibly stressful in equal measure. He'd discovered that their romantic relationship added something impossible to define to their co-habitation. They were far more comfortable with one another than they'd been in the muggle flat. They were able to... merge... their different needs seamlessly into a whole that was both, surprisingly peaceful and utterly fulfilling.

He could drink his tea now without feeling like hurling every time he saw Harry's runny porridge. He could argue more freely about the auror's far too unhealthy preferences in food. They could sit and... kiss... for hours, without either of them looking at the clock, waiting for that second when the boy would finally say that it was getting far too late to be out of bed...

Thinking about beds reminded him of the fact that there were two dormitories in the house. He didn't know if he was more relieved or upset about the obvious fact that he hadn't been brought here to be... seduced. He'd looked at the spare bedroom with a growing sense of forlorn inadequacy and the fact that the gryffindor had failed to... _sense_ his growing unease had come as a shockingly harsh blow to him.

He sighed and rubbed the bump on the bridge of his nose warily, telling himself firmly that this wasn't Harry's fault. He'd grown used to the boy's perceptiveness and was, by now, so accustomed to the idea that whatever troubled him would end up being, not only picked up by his partner, but also promptly addressed that he was becoming _lazy_ in many ways.

He'd been _appalled_ by the unwelcome realization that he'd grown used to allowing the child's emotional strength to become a clutch of sorts. Something that he used as a tool to force himself into dealing with whatever it was that they had to deal with. If Harry brought up an issue, _any_ _issue,_ he was willing enough to address it with the truth, but... he had yet to be the one to instigate one of these conversations. He had yet to be the one to have the confidence of daring to _imply_ that something relating to their relationship made him unhappy...

It wasn't until a single lock of his hair had been carefully brushed off his face that he realized that Harry had, not only abandoned his reading, but also scooted closer to him on the couch that they were sharing.

"What is it, Severus?. Are you feeling... _cooped_ _up_ in so small a house?. We could go back to Hogwarts if that'll make you more comfortable, you know?. I can have us both packed up within the hour, all you have to do is say the words."

His face turned into Harry's gentle hand. Pale skin accepting, without a single word needing to be spoken, the implied caress that the auror's fingers had been trying to deliver to his bony cheek.

"Your home is fine, Harry." He half-whispered after a second, and allowed his dark eyes to fix on the boy's green ones, mentally _willing_ him to address their lack of... _progress._.. on the physical department.

"You don't like the village?"

Disappointment surged through his veins like a tidal wave and he closed his eyes, bringing his long eyelashes into delicate, fluttery contact against the very tips of Harry's finger-pads. Silence descended, like a dark cloud, over the room and he tensed in instinctive expectation of some sort of... _criticism._

"Severus?"

The gryffindor sounded genuinely puzzled. The boy was waiting for some kind of explanation that he could not bring himself to offer and his own inability to just... open his mouth and _allow_ whatever came out to fall where it may, riled him to no end!.

"I'm nervous about this vacation. I don't know what you are expecting to happen between us, and it's driving me spare. I just... I think I need some sort of clarification about exactly what is it that we are doing here."

Harry sighed and turned fully around, kneeling carefully on the sofa so that his face was directly in front of Severus' own. Searching green eyes settled over him and a smile that was as tender as it was filled with a pained sort of patience curved the boy's lips upwards.

"We are trying to spend some time together, Severus. Nothing more, but also nothing less. We are attempting to become even closer. Trying to create the kind of memories that we'll remember with fondness one day. We are trying to cheat time and stretch these short two weeks into an eternity of kisses and walks along the shore. We are trying to overdose on fire-warmed evenings and quiet conversations that start out with the possibility of them lasting all night long. We are trying to build a stronger, better, _us."_

His heart pounded against the constraining prison of his ribcage and he blinked away the fierce burning that had started to sting his widened dark eyes.

"That sounds... _wonderful"_ He managed to croak after a second or two of dazed, awed silence. He could not even imagine what he'd be doing back at Hogwarts right about now. Could not recall what he'd done in the last years during _any_ of his vacations other than... _toil_ at his many tasks, like a little diligent squirrel. He'd spied and he'd marked papers. He'd brewed potions and obeyed commands. He'd cursed, he'd cured, he'd murdered and lied. But he hadn't had a second for himself...

"I'm glad that you think so, Severus. I want our first vacation together to be perfect." Harry's smile was soft and loving, gentle. Tanned hands framed his face and held it like a treasure before the gryffindor's lips descended over his own. They kissed with the kind of delicate care of the very early days and he felt so utterly adored that his every doubt abandoned him under the onslaught of emotion that was bombarding his overwhelmed senses.

Harry's lips moved tenderly over his, a warm tongue-tip prodded him open and he sighed against it with eager abandon. His neck curled against the top curve of the couch and he felt his partner's right hand settle on the nape of his neck, in an effort to cushion the exposed back of his head from the hard wooden edge that framed the sofa. The simple action sank under his skin like a dart meant for his heart. It lodged deeply there, eroding the very last of his defenses, and he gasped against Harry's mouth with unbridled surrender.

When they parted to stare at one another, like a pair of crazed teenagers, they were _both_ burning with desire. They were both breathless and both certain that they might not actually _live_ to see the daylight, unless they burrowed under the other's skin and learned to live there.

"Severus, I..."

"Harry!" He interrupted the boy in a rush of panicked urgency. He'd finally found the courage to speak out and was terrified of losing it again, unless he spoke his mind out loud this instant. He'd finally found the faith that he'd been lacking when he'd looked deeply into these emerald eyes and seen nothing but a simple refection of himself within their depths. He could build his home right here: inside this gaze that saw him. He could find shelter in these arms that had never, ever, _failed_ to protect him. He could become so much more than he'd ever been, if only he could have this man's encouragement in his life.

"Harry I... I need you to understand that I do love you" He whispered it fiercely and felt not a speck of fear touch his heart as his companion stilled before him. Shocked silence met his declaration and a gasp that wasn't his own rent the sudden quietude.

Their gazes clashed and he allowed himself to wear his heart on his sleeve for this man's benefit. He was undone by the power of the emotion he'd just named, but he _wanted_ to be undone by it. He didn't fear his own emotions any longer. Had no desire to hide them or deny them in any way. He felt vulnerable and powerful at the same time and he liked it. He felt safe, and free, and whole. He felt... amazing!.

He smiled then with the kind of bright and joyful expression that his face hadn't really had that many chances to show before this second.

Harry blinked dazedly at him, emerald pools of deep devotion turned bright with a crystalline film of barely repressed tears as the silence simply stretched into eternity. It was a full minute or two before his gryffindor finally pleaded with a gruff, wavering voice:

"Tell me that you are right _here..._ that you are _awake_ and you are _safe._ Tell me that we are together, here in Wales, and I am not asleep, please!... Tell me that this is _true._ That this is _happening._ That I've just heard you turn my every dream into reality..."

Severus laughed with the kind of exuberant mirth that he hadn't felt in years and the smile that curved his lips became even more obvious. It was a rare and beautiful thing, joyful and loving.

"You are awake, Harry. We _both_ are..."

He was gathered like a treasure then. Held between the gryffindor's strong arms and kissed soundly. His lips throbbed under the onslaught of the passion being bestowed upon them like a benediction. Or a promise. Or acceptance.

One caress merged into another and he became the adored recipient of a million loving kisses. His lips were possessed, traced, claimed. Then his cheeks followed the same fate. His jawline was similarly attacked and the curve of his ears, his forehead, his eyelids, the very top of his head...

Their lips parted but their skins remained linked through their hands. Their gazes interlocked and Severus' long hair was spread along the entire length of Harry's right arm. They were both breathless. Both exultant with happiness. Both maddened with love.

"I... lost hope so many times, Severus. I... accepted so many things, so many _others_ who were never really able to match you in any way... I allowed _myself_ to settle for second best, and even third and forth. I wanted to love you with my every waking thought, but ended up _failing_ in that task out of sheer... desperation.

I'd love to say that I deserve you, but I know that I don't. You would have been faithful. I know you would have!. You wouldn't have ever settled for another. You wouldn't have lost your faith so many times... I know that I'm not the right kind of man for you. I know that I'm too selfish and impatient, too _driven_ by the rashness of my nature to come even close to being the sort of man that you deserve. But I don't _want_ to see you love another. I don't _want_ to step aside and find a manful smile from somewhere when you finally met a bloody paragon of patience. I want you for myself!. I want to hold onto you, onto _this._ I'm selfish enough to dare trying to keep you shackled to my life. I'm flawed enough to look you in the eye and hope that you never discover another who loves you better. Less selfishly. More patiently... I _wish_ to have you for myself from this day forth, Severus... and I'm praying with all of my strength that you never tire of me. Of _us._ Of _this._.."

He felt choked with sheer tenderness as he absorbed every word like a sponge left out in the rain. They were soothing his every fear. Healing his every wound, turning this one moment of his life into a single, flawless rendition of perfection. If he could live to feel greater joy than he felt in this one second, then he'd have to find himself another heart to fit all of his emotions into, because they would surely be too much, simply... too much, for a single human organ to contain. If could feel any more complete than he felt now, then he'll become another man altogether. If he could find a way to _exist..._ forever... in _this_ moment he'd certainly die trying to do so.

"I told you once that you have more faith in me than I deserve, Harry. I doubt that I'm such a treasure, but I'll take your word for it. I'd like all that praying to be gone, though. I'm tired of praying for everything. I don't want to fear that another might come between us, either. I want to have certainty and trust. I want to be... myself. Only _myself._ I want you to be whoever you truly are while we are together. I don't care if that happens to be a selfish and flawed person or simply a youth who can be stubborn beyond measure. I do not deserve you, either, but I will hold onto you, too. I'll hold onto _us, _onto _this,_ with all of my strength, and heart, and soul. I want to _allow_ myself to become _yours_ with everything that I am."

"Yes. Yes!. I want that, too."

They stared into each other's eyes for a long time. Harry's fingers soon began to comb gently through his long, dark hair and the peace that grew between them was addictive.

The fire crackled in the grate and a sudden burst of freezing rain began to lash against the windowpane. They ignored the storm completely and remained locked together within this bubble filled with sheer love that they had just created. They found warm safety within the arms of one another, so much so that they had no awareness of the elements that raged on the other side of the door. It was as if they were blind, and deaf, to the very existence of the outside world.

"Harry I... I haven't been entirely honest with you about something and I don't know _how_ to say this to you, other that to just... I... I..." His voice failed him completely and he became unable to continue. His cheeks flushed scarlet and his eyes lowered. His throat convulsed nervously as his long body became rigid with anxiety.

Harry's whole frame froze next to his own and a hand that trembled visibly came to hold him by the chin, bringing his blushing face upwards so that his ebony colored eyes could come into direct contact with the green ones.

"What is it? Please, whatever it is just... say it. You are really scaring me, Severus!"

His teeth found the soft tissue of his lower lip and dug into it worriedly, until his companion forced him to release the tortured skin with a single, gentle pat of his thumb.

"I... you'll think that I'm a freak..."

"A freak?... That doesn't make any sense!."

He felt utterly mortified by the confession that he was about to make and it showed clearly in his face. Harry's puzzled frown gave him encouragement, but the words abandoned him waveringly.

"I've already told you how I've been... described... with cruel accuracy many times before. I... I am not an attractive man. I was never an attractive teenager, either. So far I... I've failed miserably to inspire any kind of physical interest towards my person.

Draco thinks it imperative that I tell you exactly how... _lacking..._ my actual sexual experience is. He believes that it'd be a mistake for me to allow you to continue laboring under the erroneous assumption that I've been... _touched..._ by another, when I haven't. I... I... I've never been... I am still a virgin, Harry."

The moment hung as if suspended by a thread and the auror remained frozen to the spot. There was something wide and bright fleeting through those emerald-painted eyes that had all the hallmarks of incredulity. Harry seemed shell-shocked. Utterly paralyzed by surprise. There was no laughter of any kind in his expression. There was only the most obvious disbelief plastered, like a mask, over the slack-jawed lines of his astounded face. As one heartbeat slowly gave way to another an amazed sort of look started to appear on that young visage. There was awe and there was... reverence. There was a sudden, trembling descent into adoration as those tanned fingers rose towards his own ashen face and held it oh-so-gently. Harry looked straight at him with utter humbleness.

"Thank you, my love. Thank you for being _you._ Thank you for keeping to your ideals and your hopes. For giving me this incredible gift that I can never offer you in return. I am... _honored._.. beyond measure in this instant. I shall always strive to _deserve_ being with you. I'm going to cherish you until we are both gray and old and can't remember each other's names..."

A shy smile appeared in Severus' face. He could feel it blossoming there, but had no actual idea of just how... appealing... it made him look.

"That's quite the claim, Potter. I wonder if you'll think the same in a couple of days, let alone years into the future. I must warn you now, though: I'm not the easiest of men to get involved with. I tend to be rather _difficult. _Let's not rush too far ahead yet, all right? I detest being made promises to, only to find out at the last second that they were all perfectly worthless. I think it's better to just... be honest and recognize that things will be difficult. Maybe even distressingly hard, at least for me. I prefer to promise that I'll _attempt_ to survive every day as it comes. I'll attempt to be more open, less defensive, more trusting... Will that be _acceptable_ to you, at least for now?"

Harry sobered immediately. His tanned face became so serious that he looked like a monolith under the flickering light that came off from the fire.

"I told you this before, Severus. I can do patience for you, as long as you don't try to block me off. I... I react badly to that. I don't mind you screaming at me to leave you alone for a while, but you'll have to actually say it. Do you understand? Trying to guess what you need all by myself, while you run away and give me the silent treatment, really messes with my head."

He could see what they were doing. They were actually laying the terms that would become the very foundations of their future relationship in this very instant. They were openly admitting that they actually had a future that included their long-term _togetherness._ They were becoming even more officially... _involved. _He faltered for a single heartbeat, utterly spooked by the immensity of the moment. He became suddenly aware that he wouldn't be the same ever again. Not after this second. This moment would change his life forever. It would chance his soul. His fate. His dreams. This moment would make or break his future. It would make or break _him..._

"I am willing to try, Harry. I'll need help though. I don't think I'm very good at relating to others in general and what we are trying to build together falls so far outside the realms of my already limited experience that it could actually be considered uncharted territory. I'm afraid of messing this up. I don't want to risk and lose. Not for a short-lived affair. I don't have the strength for that. I'm too old for games of any kind, so... could we agree not to move forwards, unless this matters to you beyond a night, a week, or even a month?. I... I don't _want_ you to play with my emotions. Not in that manner, please."

Harry looked right at him for a long time, he had shifted into a kneeling position on the sofa, so that both their faces were almost at a level. They were close, very close. Harry's body literally barred his view of the rest of the room. Of the rest of the world. He could only see the boy, could only feel the warmth that emanated from his young body reach across the small distance that separated their chests to fill him with a breathless sort of nervous anxiety.

He felt the soft puffs of air that were coming off the auror's mouth, with every breath that he exhaled, fall across his own cheekbones and lips. Across his chin and neck. Across the entirety of his face and shivered in overwhelmed reaction to their touch.

After a few seconds of increasingly focused scrutiny Harry's hand rose to bury itself in his scalp. His hair shifted and rearranged itself to flow, around the tanned digits trying to claim ownership of it, like drops of ebony rainwater. Those green eyes nailed him to the spot with the kind of fire that could have scorched a volcano without effort.

"Don't you understand what I want from you, from _us,_ Severus? Are you even aware of the fact that I... I've been _obsessed_ with you for a very long time now? Can you _cope_ with the idea that you probably mean more to me than I shall ever mean to you?. Could you _live_ with the knowledge that I... _crave..._ you, like the air I need to breathe? Do you understand that I probably need you more than I need food, or drink, or even sleep?.

I desire _everything_ from you. I will take anything that you are comfortable with giving me, though. But you must understand that a day alone will not be enough. A week will be... too little. A month couldn't possibly quench one tenth of the thirst that I feel towards you. I want _forever._ I want marriage, family, belonging... I want it _all._ That is what I _want,_ it might not be what I get. It might be something that you'll never grow comfortable enough to give me, but that doesn't change the fact that I will always wish for it. _Always!..._

I am not playing any games here. Not with you. Not with your heart. And definitely _never_ with _us..._ This relationship means _everything_ to me."

There were no words left in Severus. None in his mind nor his heart. None in his memories of all the advice that had been given to him by far wiser men than he, himself, had ever been. There was nothing that he could possibly offer in answer to that statement. Nothing that could possibly either made justice to it nor give the boy some sort of... promise... of a future were his dreams might actually become true.

"I don't know what I can give you, Harry. I don't know how long, or how far, I'll be able to go with this relationship. I only know that I'm willing to try my best. I'm willing to go further than I've have ever gone before. I'm willing to give you more than I've ever given anyone else. I'm not sure if it will be enough, though. Not when you need... so much more."

Harry's hands on his hair were utterly soothing. They played in his dark locks with digit-shaking devotion. The boy seemed to need that simple contact with the same kind of urgency that force all men to seek their next lungful of air.

"It was enough when all I had of you was your unconscious body on an infirmary bed and a million and one memories of the war pummeled my brain every single time that I tried to make contact with your wounded mind. It was enough when you woke up and I could hear your voice again, see your eyes narrow as they looked me up and down. Witness your courageous nature come to the fore in every single action that you took to protect yourself and Draco from my threats. It was enough when all I had was friendship. And now... now that I have you here willingly in my arms, now that you've told me that you love me... It's more than I ever imagined. It's _perfection._ It's... rap_t_ure. It's _happiness_ come to life within this cabin. I want _this._ I do!. I won't ever regret this choice. I will be happy without promises of tomorrow. I can live for today, as long as you are right here..."

He smiled softly. Ebony colored gaze turned warmer than it had ever been as he looked into those eyes that shone limpid with tears. The moment hung as they looked at one another with the kind of openness that was rare between them. There were no more secrets here. No more fears. Nothing else to hide or protect from the other one. There was only peace. And love. And magic. There was only _them..._

When he lifted his own hands to frame that young face he didn't know that he was doing it in order to better kiss the younger man, but that's exactly what he did mere moments later. They curled on the sofa, coiled tightly around one another, holding onto a shoulder, a neck, a lock of hair, a hand... their lips joined again and again in a dance that could not end, while the fire danced gently in the bright crate and the pelting rain washed the craggy shoreline throughout the long hours of the evening.

Midnight caught them still together on the sofa. Tired eyes that were alive with joy, with passion, shone brightly in a pair of faces that portrayed a blissful kind of happiness. Their lips smiled, reddened and swollen from their passionate kisses and their hands clasped one another loosely, as if their skin could not cope with the simple idea of them being apart.

Harry stirred first and they both froze as the very nature of their relationship hung in the balance. They had kissed and hugged. They had declared themselves to be emotionally involved. They had promised their present to one another, but they hadn't lain together as a couple. They hadn't bared themselves before the other. They hadn't yet attempted to become... _lovers._

"How far will you let me go, Severus? How much of yourself will you give to me?... Would you like to sleep alone, in your own room, or would you grant me the honor of agreeing to share my bed tonight?"

Black eyes blinked in the gloom but did not lower. They shone bright and certain, committed. Their owner's voice trembled almost imperceptibly when he answered in a low, roughened whisper.

"I don't want any more loneliness."

Harry's smile was bright and careful.

"Do you want me to just... hold you, all night long, so that we might sleep and wake entwined tomorrow?"

Severus blushed scarlet at the images that crossed his mind in that one second. They were born from his memories of the pictures that he'd seen in the book he'd bought for himself and from having been unwilling witness to the thousand teenage clinches that he'd interrupted, while patrolling the astronomy tower, in the dead of the night. They were Images born from the whispered conversations that he'd overhead in the boy's changing rooms during his awkward teenage years. They were images that he'd never actually _dared_ to believe he'd be mirroring one day outside the realms of his own impossible dreams.

"I... I like kissing you, Harry. I'd like to find out if... if..." He could not actually finish that sentence. He felt _crippled_ by embarrassment. By shyness. By the kind of insecurity that spanned entire decades of his life. His eyes lowered in that second and he felt his confidence crumble under a million and one doubts. He... he could not possibly appeal to Harry physically, could he?. He was too thin. Too tall. Too ugly... He didn't want to picture the kind of men the gryffindor had bedded in the past. There was no way on Earth that he could possibly compete with any of them...

This was just... it was ridiculous!. It was _insane._ He was going to end up hurt in the worst way...

"Severus, look at me. Look. At. Me!" Tanned digits held his chin and pushed it very slightly upwards, until his haunted dark gaze settled over a veritable blaze of green colored tenderness. "Do you want _more_ than kisses?"

He swallowed thickly. Words just failed him and he dared not shake Harry's hand away, lest he manage to loose with that one action whatever fragile wisps of his tattered courage still remained inside him. He could only go as far as nodding weakly. A single, jerky movement of unmistakable assent.

Harry's exhalation bathed his face with breath-warmed air and he remained very still as those green eyes studied him quietly.

"How much _more_ do you want? Will you allow me to see you bare? Do you trust me enough for that?"

Indecision tempted his cautious nature to answer with a negative that he knew he couldn't afford. If he took the easy way out now, Harry would always remain a careful beggar in his life. A man forced to _request_ physical affection. A castrated slave to love in every way that mattered. Cowardice on his part now would forever bring him humiliation. His and Harry's, both. He didn't _want_ to have to grant permission for the other man to touch him in the future. He didn't want to use the physical side of their relationship as a weapon. He wanted _truth_ and he wanted _care._ But he also wanted... real warmth. Real emotions. Spontaneity...

"I am not an attractive man, Harry..."

Determined hands held his head and a blunt-tipped finger brushed his lips into submissive silence while those eyes searched his own with unrelenting seriousness.

"That wasn't what I asked, Severus. I already know that you are afraid. And nervous, and about a millisecond away from becoming the unwilling victim of a veritable mountain of unfounded insecurities. I need you to look me in the eye and answer yes or no: will you trust me to see you bare?. To touch your body?. To be the man who shows you what physical love is?. Will you give yourself to me tonight, my love?"

Silence stretched as his heart thundered within the cage of his ribcage. This was a question that no one else had ever asked him and, as he gathered his courage to give an answer that he'd never before imagined himself giving to anyone, there was more than trepidation filling his whole consciousness. There was curiosity too. There was anticipation and hope. There was affection and trust. There was love. Just love. For Harry...

"Yes" He finally managed to whisper very quietly and, in the thickened silence, his softly voiced answer acquired the very qualities of a shout of sheer rebellion. It echoed around them, surrounding them with it's undeniable meaning before sinking, like a stone, into their minds. Yes. His answer had been yes. Now there was nowhere to hide, there'd be no one to blame if this went wrong...

Harry shifted very slightly beside him, left foot coming off the sofa and finding purchase on the floor before he extended his right hand forwards. Severus looked at that hand for a full second. His own rose to grab it shakily and he swallowed repeatedly, in order to center himself to this time and this place. He was going to do _this._ He wanted to do it. He trusted this one man enough to believe that his every fragile emotion was going to be perfectly safe here: inside this room, held by these hands, protected by this gryffindor...

The auror's warm hand curled around his own and pulled him upwards, bringing them both out of the sofa and into the fire-warmed space in front of the hearth. Wandless magic was performed on the few cushions that had graced the couch, so that they ended up growing into a gigantic mound of softly colored pillows that were covered with what felt to his touch as Pashmina wool. They collected at their feet, surrounding them. Settling, like incredibly soft pebbles, over the thick rug that occupied the area directly in front of the fireplace.

He stood still as Harry cast the Nox that extinguished the lights, leaving them both bathed in the orange-tinged glow coming off the grate. They could see each other well enough, but they could also use the shadows to hide, should they want, or even need, to do so. He suspected that this had been done as a concession to himself and his reserved nature. It was a gesture that acknowledged his obvious reluctance to accept any kind of exposure and his nerves settled greatly in reaction to that one silent, generously offered reprieve.

"We'll go slowly, Severus..." Harry whispered into the shadowed space that separated them and he shivered with sheer nerves.

A hand came to rest on his waist for a brief second. It remained there, held in utter stillness by its owner, until it's pair touched his chin briefly, turning his head slightly and bringing his averted face into the light. His dark eyes entered into a collision course with emerald green and they both looked at one another for a long second. Then Harry's mouth descended upon his and he was conscious of nothing but the gentleness of that caress.

He held tightly onto the neck of the man who seemed intent on devouring his mouth and felt Harry's arm curve around his own slender waist, bringing him even closer to that wide, athletic chest. He was held against the auror's heart like a precious, treasured jewel, as the gryffindor eased them both slowly down and backwards, into a controlled descent that ended up with them laying over the mound of soft pillows that had collected at their feet.

His dark eyes could see nothing but the boy's face, which hovered: still and fire-tainted with gold, directly above his own. Beautiful emerald eyes looked down on him with obvious devotion, with sexual desire, with the kind of passionate intensity that he'd never seen before at such close range.

"I love you with all of my heart, Severus Snape."

Every word was low-voiced but certain, whispered just above his own slightly wet and parted lips. It felt as if every syllable of that rough-toned declaration was trying to kiss him too, as each individual word was uttered straight into fragile and short-lived existence. Silence settled over them and the instant froze in time, forging the kind of delicate memory that he knew he'd protect with all his might. His eyes shone, dark like polished onyx, and filled with blind trust. He belonged, in this instant, to this man who held him with utmost care. He understood that he'd be linked, from this night forth, with Harry James Potter. He was pledging himself in all: body, heart and soul, to the son of his childhood rival but he wasn't afraid of his own daring. He'd be part of a pair, at long last. He'd belong... he couldn't find a single thing to fear in that prospect and he smiled. Truly smiled. Wholeheartedly...

The fire crackled beside them and a sudden burst of raindrops hit the darkened windowpanes. Harry lowered his head towards him in a painfully slowly arch and he waited beyond patience for the right moment to whisper his own gruff answer against those approaching lips. He spoke the words against his gryffindor's mouth, releasing them into the Ether like a prayer or a benediction. Like a promise meant to tie them into eternity, like the kiss that he could almost feel already settling, with utter reverence, against his trembling mouth:

"I love you too, Harry Potter..."

TBC...

A/N: In order to comply with the rules of this website, Chapter 42 of the original story has been completely censored from this version of it. You can now proceed to the next chapter, leaving what comes next to your imagination, which is what you should do if you don't like explicit sex-scenes or are under 18 years of age.

If you'd rather see what happens, though, and you are legally of age to do so, please feel free to check the original Chapter 42 at my dreamwitdth account, which can be found here:

http?:/?pekeleke.?dreamwidth.?org/8322.?html?#cutid1

All you have to do is remove the ? Marks and google it. Then... enjoy! :)


	42. Chapter 42

_**The voice under all silences. Chapter 42**_

He stood, utterly still and darkly attired amid the silent gravestones. His lean, unmoving form resembled a tall shadow that contrasted sharply against the bright orange backdrop of the winter sunset. Freezing wind kept trying to topple him but he remained stock still and quiet. He had no intention of allowing himself to leave before he was ready. He'd come to this place to say his piece, now nothing and no one was going to stop him from doing just that. He had to do _this._ He just... had to!.

He'd been thinking long and hard about this decision and the longer his mind dwelt on it, the more convinced he'd become of the wisdom inherent in this particular course of action. He'd loved her in silence. He'd mourned her in secret. Now he'd say goodbye to her aloud, up front, in a manner more befitting the stronger version of himself that he'd become...

It was All Hallows' Eve and he was here, in the eerily empty cemetery at Godric's Hollow. He'd come to pay a long overdue visit to his lover's dead mother. He'd arrived bearing flowers and a lightened heart that was, at last, willing to let go of the bitterness that her death had once inspired within him.

_'In loving memory of James and Lily Potter. _

_The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death...'_

He read the inscription aloud, wondering what Harry thought of it. He'd been the Master of Death itself at one point in his life. The boy could have brought his parents back so easily... yet he'd been wise enough, even at such young age, to understand that dead things belonged only in memories. They could never be returned to former life, at least not in the exact way they had been before they'd abandoned it. The world beyond the veil would change a soul forever. Things that managed to return from such places brought with them the eternal sorrow of seeing only a husk, a hollowed copy of the warmer, living soul they once had held.

He'd never asked himself what he'd have done that night if the resurrection stone had actually been in his possession. He'd been so hurt and so... desperate. He'd loved her for so long, without any respite, and he wasn't actually certain if he'd have had the strength to heed the warnings of the old stories. Would he have tried to bring her back? He wasn't certain. And he trembled in reaction to the possibility. Fate, no matter how painful it'd felt at the time, had intervened in his favor during the final battle. It had deprived him of the chance to commit an outright crime against both himself and her. Against Harry... She belonged here. Under this marble-carved gravestone. Held forever in peaceful rest beside the man she'd chosen.

The grave seemed to glow with pearled-tainted elegance in the rapidly shifting sunset light. It looked clean, dust free and tenderly cared for. He smiled with the thought that it had an air of peacefulness.

Gloved hands set a carefully selected bunch of fragile looking white roses on the headstone that protected her old bones. She'd been dead for such a long time that he'd lived longer with the sorrow of having lost her than he'd ever lived with the joy she used to bring him.

Ignoring the dismal wetness of the soft grass by her grave he knelt before it. Dark head bowed in respect. Eyes shining with the first tears he'd ever cried for her that felt clean and pure. He was willing to forgive her. Willing to forget her. He had come here to put her ghost to rest, at long last. But he had something to tell her first, something that couldn't be left unsaid. Something that her spirit might come to be close enough to hear in this particular night.

"Love is the voice under all silences... Did you know that I once told Luc that I loved you strongly enough to have no need for acknowledgment or reciprocation?. I believed myself to be _unworthy_ enough to deserve only silence. I didn't understand that loving in such a way doesn't make anyone stronger or even more deserving. It just... weakens you. It traps you. It keeps you forever a prisoner of a passion that was never meant for you...

I dwell no longer in silence, Lily Potter. I've discovered that I can dare to love someone out loud and expect to be equally loved in return. I belong out in the open now. I'm a creature who has abandoned his dark corners and has learned to _thrive_ in the sunlight.

I was changed by a man who loves me like you couldn't, you know?. I was saved by someone who taught me that I... I was never as unworthy as I believed myself to be. It wasn't easy, Lily. We were engaged in a bloody battle of wills that he'd won through sheer stubbornness.

I had to learn to trust in him, you know? I had to be _dragged_ into faith, like a lost child. I'm no longer the same boy you went to school with. I have changed for the better. I have fought two wars and won. I have _survived, _despite my every wrong choice. I have conquered most of my fears and I have come here to humbly tell you that I... I'm in love with your son. I have been in love with him for a while now, Lily._"_

His words halted for a second and his onyx eyes lifted enough to become fixed on her name. A bright smile curved his lips then, and his whole expression became alive with a bright hope. His black gaze softened with affection and he became a darkly attired rendition of the kind of vibrant joy that could neither be hidden nor denied. His long fingers closed around the small square box that he'd been carrying inside the most secure pocket his austere winter robes and he extracted the item slowly, bringing it reverently out into the rapidly fading light, and holding it very gently before her gravestone as if in offering.

"I have told him how I feel, of course. I've told him, maybe not as many times as he has done, but... plenty enough. We've been together for a little over a year now and, although things haven't been always easy, they have brought us both great happiness, Lily. I believe Harry could live like this forever. I believe he'd be willing to accept what we have now and call himself content. But he... he once told me that he wanted... _everything_."

His throat closed at the memory and he became lost in his own thoughts for a long time. His eyes weren't focusing on the darkened cemetery that surrounded him, no. They were lost in the contemplation of the life he'd been leading for a whole year now. His mind had brought him home already, back to his warm and brightly lit rooms at Hogwarts...

Harry had been roped into accompanying a gaggle of Weasley youngsters trick-or-treating and he knew that it'd be hours before the boy came back. Still... the idea that their couch patiently awaited them, the knowledge that their fireplace was already prepared to hold the blaze in front of which they'll cuddle before going to bed, exchanging brief conversation about nothing in particular, filled him with the kind of certainty that he'd never really known before the auror entered his life. His smile became even softer and he faced her white tomb with quiet dignity.

"I believe your son deserves better than to live his life devoting himself to faithful domesticity without being ever granted the opportunity to become more than a lover. That is a title that doesn't truly suit him. It diminishes who he is and what he means to me. It cheapens the both of us. It is unworthy of him...

I also believe that he won't ever take this step. _This_ has always been my call to make. My choice. This is one more example of the freedom he has given me... I can chose. I can decide. I can make my own demands and expect him to at least listen to them all. I want to give him what he deserves, Lily. I _must_ take _this_ last step in order to be free from my own past, from you. I want to _live_ beyond today. I want to embrace a world where I'm brave enough to speak about the future. I want to free myself from you. I've come here, tonight, to leave the man I used to be behind. I'm going to turn my back on you forever, Lily. I'm going to cast you away and allow my heart to be filled by Harry and Harry alone...

I don't want him to remain your son all of his life. I refuse to allow him to exist in a world of loving affection, without having any actual formal claim to his own family. He wants to have it all and, if there's a man alive who deserves to be _my_ _everything, _then it's got to be him_._

I'm going to ask him to marry me, my friend. I hope that, from wherever you are looking down on us, you understand that we love one another and you approve. Of _me._ For him... Do not fear that I may mistreat him, or ignore him, or attempt to give him anything less than the very best I've got to give. I'll give him my strength and my loyalty. My very heart and soul. I'll give him everything that I am right now and everything that I might ever become..."

As his voice gave life to those lasts sentences the tangled jumble of words that had been twirling and twisting around in his mind, all week long, settled into a space filled with a peaceful sort of emptiness. His shoulders relaxed ever so slightly and he became finally aware that there was nothing left for him to say. He had finally spoken to her and it hadn't been as hard as he'd imagined it would be. He felt suddenly lighter, cleaner, freer. He exhaled deeply, with the air of a man who has come through a dark and frightening tunnel to find himself finally beyond fear. His hand fluttered a little aimlessly in the air before coming to rest, ever so gently, on the stone-cold reality of her tombstone.

"I loved you dearly, Lilly Potter, but now Ive finally found my life beyond you. I hope you bless us with acceptance, my old friend. I hope you embrace your son's own choice with open mindedness. You, who loved him enough to die for him, should have no trouble recognizing another soul willing offer him that very same sacrifice, should it ever be needed..."

He watched quietly as his words seemed to sink into the stone with the very last rays of sunlight and a single, pearl-colored flash of diamond-bright light swept across the white marble like the fragile shimmer of a patronus. He couldn't see her, but felt her here, sitting atop her tombstone right next to him. A sudden touch of bone-freezing cold settled against his pale cheekbone and his eyes closed in pained submission to her touch. Yes. She was here. She had come to hear his words and give him... What? Acceptance? Forgiveness? Reassurance?... He didn't _know_ what she wanted but he was willing to treasure this last second of communion between them.

The instant shattered like stardust and her cold touch vanished almost as swiftly as it had come to freeze his pale skin. A gust of wind ruffled the delicate petals of his offer of flowers and he could have sworn that he felt her wrap her invisible long digits around the box that he still held in his palm.

The first star rose in the shadowy dusk sky and it's light seemed to shine brighter than ever. It lit the grave with otherworldly beauty and he wondered if this was what acceptance truly felt like.

"I'll look after our Harry for you now. He's no longer alone, Lilly" He muttered through the thick knot that had lodged, like a piece of jagged glass, inside his throat. "Farewell, my friend. Farewell..."

He rose then. Towered over her white tombstone for a single heartbeat before turning his head around. A swift wave of his birch wand removed all traces of wet mud out of his ruined robes and then he was ready to go. His boots took that first step away from her with the kind of certainty that spoke of a heart finally freed. He turned away sharply and didn't hesitate for a single second in leaving her behind. He felt saddened to a point, yes, but he felt also elated. He felt stronger and determined and at peace. He was abandoning her finally to her grave and to her choice. To the life that had never truly held a place for him, and to the death that had taken her away so long ago... This had been her fate, but it had never been his. _His_ destiny had always, _always,_ placed him beside Harry.

His feet led him slowly towards the arched entrance to the cemetery, waving idly, in and out, among the silent graves. He was lost in his own thoughts, quietly contemplating his plans for a small dinner over the weekend. He wanted to spend Saturday night in the little cottage that Harry owned in Wales. He wanted to take this final step in front of the same fireplace where he'd committed to the brat for the first time. Back to the place where the bitter man he used to be had finally lost the war that he'd been, so stubbornly, waging against himself and decided to embrace the emotional needs that he'd always denied.

A sudden wave of anxiety rose within him at the enormity of what he was about to do here. Soul-bonded... He was going to offer the boy an unbreakable bond. A promise of eternity. He wasn't going to simply pledge his heart to Harry here and genuinely promise to do his best, no, he was going to offer the kind of thing that not even Artur Weasley had dared to commit to. The influence of Salazar's Shield was going to turn his simple proposition of marriage into something very different altogether. They couldn't have the luxury of being mostly certain, no. They'd have to be beyond all doubt and fear. They'd never have the chance to be simple spouses. No matter what their desires to the contrary might be, the shield would take their rather ordinary pledge and push it a step further. They'd be linked to one another beyond what was formally expected in simple marriage. They'd be joined in heart and soul. They'd never be able to... give up. There'd be no chance of divorce. There'd be nothing else for them but an eternity of togetherness, where no freedom could be had from one another. If their love ever waned... They'd become trapped.

He trembled with the sudden, irrational terror of being rejected and his feet faltered, bringing him to a sudden, shaken stop among the tall gravestones.

He imagined himself presenting his carefully chosen ring to Harry on Saturday. He could see himself kneeling before the boy, like the hope-filled supplicant he was meant to be, could even smell the flowers he'd put on the table and the thick warm wax of the candles that he'd lit. He could picture Harry's surprised expression turning to gentle formality as he looked sadly straight into his own eyes. Could imagine the soft whisper with which the boy would, very gently, inform him of the fact that, although loving him wasn't a problem, a soul-bond was just too much of a commitment. Many men Harry's age would balk at being asked to tie themselves through so irreversible a knot. His eyes darkened with unutterable pain and his breath halted. His frame shook with paralyzing fear and his heart became too heavy to remain confined within the fragile prison of his ribcage. His long fingers clutched the little box with enough strength to turn his knuckles white and an eternity of dark misery seemed to open before his eyes as the scene unfolded, in excruciatingly painful detail, inside his mind.

"No. _No._ NO!. I'm not going to do this to myself. I'm not doing this to Harry, either. To _us!_. That man loves me with the kind of love that doesn't give up. That hasn't let me down so far. He waited forever for a chance, just one chance, to be beside me. He put me back together and opened his whole world to me: his friends, his family, the whole of wizarding society... he is not going to reject me in any way. He was ready for eternity long before I even woke, for Salazar's sake!. I _know_ that he won't balk at the Soul-bond. I _know_ _it!._ _Why_ am I still doing _this_ to myself?...

I'm _done_ with loving in silence and having no faith in hope. I've got no need for that. Not any longer. I have certainty and acceptance and security, now. I've found my shelter and I'm not going to chicken out at the last hurdle and give up on my own happy ending out of... cowardly self-doubt."

A blinding smile broke out on his lips and he took a single deep breath before letting every uncertainty go. He refused to bring them back home with him. They had no place in his future. Shaking himself off, like a dog trying to get rid of unwanted water droplets, he resumed his walk with steps that were suddenly hurried. He was bouncing down the hill with a fierce purpose. He was filled with a new determination. He was certain of the future that he'd planed and was cradling all his hopes within his palm.

The fragile first rays of the steadily raising moon touched briefly over the small square box that was nestled within his hand. Pale moonbeams wrenched shimmering flashes of delicate silver from the carefully etched legend that he'd paid a fortune to have delicately inscribed on the dark, velvety lid:

_'What wealth of grace rests here belongs to Harry Potter...' _

He read the words aloud and smiled, knowing that his Harry would understand _why_ he used this one sentence. He'd placed his entire heart within this box. It contained every hope he held for their future. Every dream still left for him to dream. Every little possibility still open for them both to reach out towards...

He pocketed the ring-box once more and strode purposely down the path. His mind was filled with the warm image of home. With the cherished vision of his shadowed office and the promise of an evening spent embracing his beloved in contented companionship by the light of the fire.

Harry would be home in a few hours and they'd laugh and talk and kiss until the night became too old to hold them tethered to wakefulness. They'd walk hand in hand into their bedroom and lay down beside each other, like they'd done every night since the first time they slept together. They'd coil against one another, like two halves of the same creature intent on becoming joined once again, and their dreams would hold no nightmares from the past.

Saturday would come soon enough. And his question would receive the answer he desired. Of that he was utterly certain. Harry loved him through and through. Forever. Genuinely...

A soul-bond wasn't going to be enough to scare his gryffindor. Not when it'd finally lead them to the chance of pulling open that last door that he'd kept so firmly closed between them for a whole year.

From now on all doors would be opened. All rooms would hold light, all doubts would be vanished into exile. He had found his home at last. His safety. He'd found that coveted shelter where he wanted to risk dwelling from this day forth...

_The end._


End file.
